Cancer treatment

Cancer can be treated by surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, or treatment using monoclonal antibodies or other means. The choice of treatment depends on the location and degree of the tumor and stage of the disease, as well as the general condition of the patient (performance status). There are also a number of experimental cancer treatment methods under development.
The aim of the treatment is to completely remove the cancer without harming the rest of the body. Sometimes this can be achieved by surgery, but the tendency of cancer to invade neighboring tissues or spread to distant sites by microscopic metastases often limits their effectiveness. Chemotherapy is also often effective in the amount of toxicity it causes to other tissues in the body. Radiation can also cause damage to normal tissues.
Because "cancer" refers to a class of diseases, [1] [2] it is unlikely that there will ever be a "single cure for cancer" just as there will not be one cure for all infectious diseases. I previously thought that blood vessel inhibitors had the potential to act as a "magic therapy" for many types of cancer, but this was not the case in practice. [3]