To cure a solid tumor, local control of the primary malignancy must be achieved. Chemoradiation therapy, also known as chemoradiotherapy is a cancer treatment that combines chemotherapy with radiation therapy. The use of chemoradiation therapy can reduce and even terminate the need for surgery. Local, regional, and distant diseases relative to surgery can be reduced greatly. It also reduces sickness, while undergoing treatment and the risk of relapsing once in remission.
The two treatments that make up chemoradiation therapy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy were actually discovered on accident. Chemotherapy was discovered when men who fought in the WWI trenches and were gassed came home with changes in their bone marrow cells. Radiotherapy had been discovered in 1896 when it was used for x-rays and doctors noticed an improvement in various patients ' health over a period of time. The two treatments were part of the cancer removal process for a long time, just never together.
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The use of chemicals to enhance radiation effects had been suggested, but not actually tested. In 1958, a scientist and doctor named Heidelberger made a discovery that would change the face of cancer treatment. The scientist combined fluorouracil with radiation photons. The resulting combination provides local control of tumor mass and prevents/controls metastatic diseases. Heidelberger administered his cure for a total of seven days; the cure consisted of twenty mg/kg of fluorouracil per day with between fifteen and twenty Gy doses of radiation. By the 1970s, chemoradiation therapy had become the encouraged way of cancer treatment at Mayo Clinic. Everett Vokes, the chairman of the University of Chicago Medical Department has called chemoradiation, “the standard of care for several types of solid tumors that are at the intermediate