Cancer chemotherapy treatment protocols - David Khayat

This is a practical guide to the use of anti–cancer drugs in a hospital setting. The book is divided into three sections. Section one is an A–Z of all drugs used in cancer chemotherapy with a brief overview of the mechanism of action, indication, dosage, tolerance, abbreviation and pharmaceutical preparations. The second section of the book (which forms the main body of the text) goes through each particular cancer, system by system, and covers the main drug combinations used to treat them, ranking them in order of efficacy. This gives the doctor an immediate idea of which treatment is likely to be the most effective for any given cancer. The protocol for that drug combination is then given in a standard format showing the dosage of the various drugs in the combination together with the time schedule for each drug. The toxicity and side effects of the drug combination in the various organ systems is then listed indicating the severity of each. The entry is concluded with a comments field and one selected further reading reference. Entries for all major cancers follow this standard format. The final section covers the symptomatic management of side effects of chemotherapy such as alopecia, nausea and vomiting, neutropenia etc. This handy paperback will prove to be an invaluable source of quick reference on all the key facts of cancer chemotherapy for the busy practising clinician and its highly structured database–like format allows rapid retrieval of information.