The Pros And Cons To The Study Of Neuroblastoma

Scientist are currently researching neuroblastoma, they are making progress in figuring out the causes of the disease along with treatments for it. One organization involved in helping this disease is The Neuroblastoma Children’s Cancer Society. This is a group made up of volunteers that raise money to help with local research, they also want to raise national awareness. Another organization involved in helping Neuroblastoma is the Children’s Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation, this organization supports the families of those affected by Neuroblastoma, they also are helping to find a cure for this disease.

Some risk factors in Neuroblastoma are, lifestyle, age, and heredity. The lifestyle related risk factors included things such as weight, physical

A couple examples are chemotherapy and radiation, there is pros and cons to both treatments. Chemotherapy uses “anti-cancer drugs”, typically injected into a vein. The drug then enters the bloodstream and travels through the body, it’s purpose is to get to the cancer cells and kill them off. There is benefits and also disadvantages to this type of treatment, one pro to the treatment is that most of the side effects that happen during the treatment go away after treatment is done. A con to this type of treatment is all of the side effects such as, hair loss, mouth sores, loss of appetite… and many others. As for radiation, it uses particles to kill cancer cells, a negative side of this treatment is the long term side effects. A pro to radiation treatment is what it can accomplish, radiation can be used to help in relieving the pain associated with neuroblastoma, it can also shrink the size of tumors. The success rate of chemotherapy is two percent overall and based on a five year survival rate it is about ninety five percent for low risk patients and about fifty percent for high risk patients. A breakthrough treatment in cancer is the cyberknife, this treatment uses highly specialized robotic equipment in order to provide a non-invasive radiation treatment. This idea targets tumors with precision and less treatment sessions for the patient. This treatment is painless and has a very short recovery time, but it still exposes radiation and has small amount of side effects. The doctors anticipate very high success rates, rates as high as ninety eight percent