Review
From a historical view, we learned that the Egyptians were
the first to use chemotherapy, and that serious investigation
of chemotherapy started with the observation of some unusual
reactions of soldiers exposed to some chemicals used in World
War II.
We learned that all cells, healthy and malignant, go through
distinct phases in their life cycle. This is called the cell
cycle. Chemotherapy drugs are designed to disrupt a cell's
function at one or all of these phases. It is also important
to know that normal cells, as well as cancer cells, are affected
by chemotherapy, and the cause of unpleasant side effects
is toxicity of the drugs to normal cells.
Chemotherapy can be used for curative and palliative purposes
and it is often given after other therapies (such as surgery
or radiation) have destroyed the clinically detectable cancer
cells (adjuvant chemotherapy).
In the discussion of chemotherapy drugs, we learned that
there are different ways that chemotherapeutic agents are
administered: oral chemotherapy; intravenous chemotherapy;
and intrathecal chemotherapy.
In addition, the major categories of chemotherapy agents
were described: alkylating agents; antimetabolites; plant
alkaloids; and anti-tumor antibiotics.
Finally, some side effects caused by chemotherapy include
fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, hair loss, and changes in mood
and emotions.
Quiz
It's time to see how much you have learned from this unit.
A True-False type of quiz, including ten questions, has been
created to give you an opportunity to reinforce what you have
learned.
Since the quiz is created as an incentive for learning, rather
than an objective evaluation of learning results, the score
of the quiz will not be captured and will not be recorded.
Feedback to your answer is provided in real-time, instantaneously,
so you may select another choice if your first choice is not
the correct one.
These quiz questions are grouped into five sets of two questions
each to reduce the size of the content on each page. When
you finish the questions in one set, click the navigation
arrows in the Title Bar to go to the next page. Please click
here to take the quiz.
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