Cancer malignant tumours chemotherapy

Usually some 50% of malignant tumours in man initiate colonies in remote sites. Hence chemotherapy, which used to be reserved for terminal cases, is now introduced at the beginning of treatment, as soon as the mass of a solid tumour has been removed by surgery or radiation. This is done because drugs can reach out, far beyond the surgeon s knife and radiotherapist s rays, to destroy metastatic colonies of cancer cells anywhere in the body. Some 50 anti-cancer drugs have now been established as clinically useful (see Sections 5.0 and 6.3f). 

Csaki C, Ferenez T, Schuler D, Borsi JD. Recombinant human erythropoietin in the prevention of chemotherapy-induced anaemia in children with malignant solid tumours. Eur J Cancer 1998 34(3) 364-7. 

ATLS is potentially a catastrophic complication of chemotherapy in patients with a high tumour load. It results from cytotoxic damage to large numbers of cancerous cells. The DNA and RNA released are broken down to uric acid, which precipitates in the renal tubules causing acute uric acid nephropathy. Recent evidence suggests that recombinant urate oxidase, which converts uric acid to soluble allan-toin, is successful in the treatment and prevention of ATLS in patients with haematological malignancies. 

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