Cancer Treatment Options Forum - May 19th, 2011 - 3 Comments

how long does chemo keep killing cancer cells after being injected in the body ?

There are 3 comments for this post.

formerly_bob on May 19, 2011 12:31 am

There are many different chemotherapy drugs and they are cleared from the body at different rates. Some only stay in the body for a few hours and some stay for more than few days. With drugs that work by directly killing cancer cells, the effects only last as long as the drug is in the system, but other cancer drugs work slowly after the drug is out of the system through elimination of chemical pathways that are needed for new cells to grow. The latter type of chemotherapy takes a complete cell life cycle to run its course, which can be several weeks.
april on May 19, 2011 12:31 am

My onco told me to drink plenty of liquids to flush the chemo out as soon as possible. Obviously if the chemo wafers are inserted into the tumor bed, it will stay in the body for weeks, until the wafer has dissolved completely.
msmag on May 19, 2011 12:31 am

several weeks. And remember it’s also killed off the good cells too.