What does symptomatic treatment mean? Symptomatic treatment: side effects. Symptomatic treatment of cancer patients

As a rule, doctors can detect the causative factor of the onset and development of any disease by symptomatology. Meanwhile, the signs of pathology sometimes cause as much suffering to the patient as the underlying ailment. Symptomatic treatment is a complex of measures that affect precisely such manifestations.

When is symptomatic therapy used?

The most common examples of such therapy is the appointment of pain medication, antipyretic and expectorant. Symptomatic treatment can be independent (for example, when treating a cough) or enter into a complex of therapeutic measures (with severe clinical pictures of oncological pathologies). In one or another case, it has characteristics that need to be considered in more detail.

How is cough symptomatically treated?

Symptomatic treatment of cough of various etiologies is traditional, as it is not a separate disease arising independently. The main thing is to reveal the underlying cause of this manifestation. Having determined the etiology of the disease sign, the therapist will be able to prescribe a plan for symptomatic treatment.

Further actions and recommendations of a specialist will be aimed at elucidating the productivity of the symptom. As is known, this criterion determines the presence or absence of sputum. It is known that a wet cough occurs when sputum falls into the respiratory organs. With colds, this is a normal process.

What can be a cough and what is the nature of its origin?

The onset of symptomatic treatment is the prescription of drugs that dilute sputum and promote its rapid excretion from the bronchi or lungs. Wet productive cough is often quite difficult to cure without the use of anti-inflammatory drugs. Parallel with such drugs, antibiotics or antiviral agents are prescribed. Especially they are necessary in the event that the cough was provoked by an infection.

The use of antibiotics is resorted to in more rare cases. When symptomatic therapy is ineffective and antiviral drugs do not work, antibiotics are prescribed to relieve inflammation.

Speaking of an unproductive dry cough, it should be understood that it often occurs in the first stage of the disease. The patient is prescribed anti-inflammatory and cough-fixing drugs or mucolytic agents. The causes of dry cough may be an allergic reaction. In any case, the therapy should appoint a doctor.

Objectives of symptomatic therapy for cough, ARVI and oncology

Symptomatic treatment of influenza and SARS often has a huge likelihood of complications. Taking medications that stop symptoms does not give a deep result and a chance for a full recovery. Cough, runny nose, fever are signs of a respiratory or viral disease, which can be eliminated only through a comprehensive treatment based on antiviral drugs and antibiotics.

If the symptomatic cough treatment is aimed at complete recovery, then this treatment option for cancer has a completely different purpose. The need for this kind of treatment in cancer patients does not depend on the course of the disease and its stage. For example, at the initial stage of the disease, when the tumor is already found in the body, but does not manifest itself in any way, the patient may become depressed or suffer from psychoemotional disorders. This condition is a symptom, which means that it needs correction of the treatment regimen.

The benefits of symptomatic treatment for cancer

With the radical removal of cancer education, symptomatic therapy is also necessary, since any interference in the body is fraught with the most unforeseen responses. At the stage of postoperative recovery with weakened immunity, rehabilitation of the vital functions of the whole organism is necessary.

Symptomatic treatment of cancer patients poses such problems:

• Correction and easing of heavy-carrying manifestations of a malignant tumor;
• Increase the patient's life expectancy and improve its quality.

The only and basic method of therapy is a symptomatic course for cancer patients at the fourth stage of cancer.

What is the symptomatic therapy for malignant tumors?

Treatment of a symptomatic nature can be of two types:

1. Surgical. It is also called nonspecific; It is applied when the increase in the size of a malignant neoplasm provokes bleeding, affects the blood vessels, impedes full blood circulation and causes stenosis of the organs of any of the systems: digestive, urogenital, respiratory.
2. Medicated. What is meant by symptomatic treatment can be understood by a set of procedures (radiotherapy and chemotherapy course, sanation of education, cytostatic therapy) and the prescriptions of appropriate medications, thanks to which doctors manage to save the patient from severe pain syndrome, discomfort and stop the intensive inflammatory process.

Meanwhile, most experts believe that the use of symptomatic treatment should be reasonably sufficient, as it can significantly affect the further course of antitumor therapy. The diagnosis and prognosis for the prospect of recovery here play a decisive role.

Indications for prescribing symptomatic treatment

The maximum reduction in discomfort and pain is the main goal of symptomatic treatment of cancer patients. However, it is worthwhile to understand that the impact of medicines on other organs and systems entails severe consequences. Intensive therapy and incredible amounts of potent medicines are an unthinkable strain on the body. To understand what symptomatic treatment means in oncology, you can proceed from the painful manifestations of ailment, which are often experienced by patients (at all stages of cancer):

• Disorders of the gastrointestinal tract (diarrhea, constipation);
• Rapid weight loss (anorexia, cachexia);
• Vomiting and nausea;
• Unbearable pain and dysfunctionality of the affected organ;
• Disturbances in metabolic processes;
• Renal or hepatic insufficiency;
• Neuroses, tantrums.

Manifestations of cancer in the last stages

In the third and fourth stages of cancer in complex forms of the pathology pathology doctors often resort to surgical intervention and complete removal of the tumor. In the early stages, surgery is also possible if malignant neoplasm has a significant effect on the life of the patient, and sparing drug therapy does not produce any result.

At the last stages of oncology, symptomatic treatment is usually prescribed, because of the presence of such manifestations:

1. Unbearable pain syndrome (not passing, permanent, unaffected by traditional painkillers). In the last stages, soreness increases, because often its source is not the tumor itself, but an organ that can not be removed.
2. Vomiting and unceasing nausea are standard signs of the presence of a cancerous process in the body. In the first stages of the disease, they arise because of radiation and chemotherapy, and the latter - most often because of the germination of metastases in the brain, liver, circulatory system.
3. High body temperature. Fevery patients often perceive the symptom as a sign of acute respiratory viral infection or respiratory disease and much later - as a symptom of oncology. The main characteristic is an increase in body temperature with sarcoma of bones and metastases in the liver.
4. Violations of defecation. Problems with the stool, as a rule, arise with tumors of the digestive system.

Symptomatic treatment by surgery

Regardless of the country in which symptomatic treatment of cancer patients is used, its schemes will be almost identical, differing only by the method of surgical or medicamentous influence. Operative intervention is recommended to the patient in the event that his result will significantly affect the quality of life of the patient. When tumors of the intestine, stomach, pancreas, doctors use gastrostomy, colostomy and anastomosis.

Irradiation in cancerous tumors

Among the methods of symptomatic therapy, radiation is considered to be the most common. Radiotherapy is used both external and internal, concentrating on the affected organ. The first option involves irradiating the entire zone affected by malignant formation. In the second situation, the therapeutic radiation dose is directed exactly to the tumor, maximally affecting it and practically not causing damage to other organs and systems with high toxicity. Radiotherapy allows you to stop the growth of cancer cells and the rate of progression of the disease, providing the patient with prolonged analgesia.

Chemotherapy is an element of symptomatic treatment

Also, one can not say with absolute certainty that the symptomatic treatment itself is not a threat to the health of the patient. Side effects of chemotherapy, for example, can not be foreseen, but most often they are caused by individual features of the body and its anaphylactic reaction to medications. Despite all possible risks, chemotherapy as a whole positively affects the condition of cancer patients, contributing to an increase in life expectancy.

Treatment of symptoms with medication

Separately, it is worth highlighting a group of medical drugs that are actively aimed at eliminating symptoms. To alleviate the anguish and suffering of patients with oncology, they use such medicines:

• Anesthetic (depending on the degree of pain and its intensity, can be narcotic and non-narcotic analgesics);
• Antiemetic (to eliminate the corresponding symptom);
• Antipyretic (to combat sudden temperature fluctuations);
• Antibiotics (for the prevention of the development of inflammatory and infectious processes);
• Hormonal (with tumors of the brain, thyroid gland).

What is the symptomatic treatment of cancer, it is easy to imagine the example of the appointment of drugs that increase appetite in patients. After all, the problem of eating food in patients with oncology is most often encountered. At the same time, the effectiveness and the end result of symptomatic therapy largely depends on how the patient eats.

The side effects of symptomatic cancer treatment

It should be noted that the treatment of manifestations of cancer has its negative consequences. At the fourth stage of cancer, when the patient is no longer helped by relatively weak painkillers, he is prescribed stronger drugs, which are characterized by such side effects:

• Vomiting and nausea;
• Weakness and drowsiness;
• Deterioration of appetite;
• Dizziness and hallucinations;
• Constipation.

Patients notice a pronounced narrowing of the pupils against the background of the use of opiates. In addition, not only drugs are dangerous. Analgesics and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can cause erosion of the mucous membranes of internal organs, hemorrhagic changes. Separately, it is necessary to consider the presence of an allergic reaction in a patient, which is not of a mass character, but manifests itself exclusively in special cases.

What problems do oncologists face during treatment of patients?

Symptomatic treatment of cancer patients in complex stages of the disease, where the chances of recovery are practically reduced to zero, is associated with other difficulties. In particular:

• Drugs are not appointed for systematic admission;
• Biased assessment of patients with pain intensity;
• Standard dosage or too weak anesthetic in the individual case;
• Fear of drug addiction.

Not only patients, but also their relatives are often obstacles to the full realization of the doctor's capabilities. The oncologist will not be able to help and alleviate the suffering of the patient if the following myths interfere with treatment:

• It is impossible to cure cancer;
• Analgesic medicines should be taken only if they are urgently needed;
• Fear of development of drug dependence.

Psychological qualification assistance of medical staff in the oncological clinic will help to avoid such difficulties. The patient and his family need regular consultations that can correctly adjust the family to symptomatic treatment.