Depending on the kind and stage of their cancer, patients may receive chemotherapy, either exclusively or in combination with radiation therapy and/or surgery.
Strides in chemotherapy:
- Current with the latest pharmaceutical research, Holy Name's medical oncology team offers the most contemporary therapies with the highest response rates for all disease sites.
- Today's cancer medicine encompasses hundreds of drugs, each better tailored to target specific kinds of cancer and significantly less toxic than even one generation ago. Most medicines are infused intravenously; others can be administered orally.
- New pharmaceuticals to counteract the side effects of treatment, such as nausea and anemia, are greatly improving the quality of life for patients, as well as maximizing the benefits of their therapy by allowing them to better tolerate their chemo and radiation treatments.
- Holy Name Hospital's participation in the Clinical Research Council of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System, the Gynecologic Oncology Group and the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group brings added treatment options and promising experimental therapies to patients.
At Holy Name, physicians from various medical and oncology specialties often team with interventional radiologists and nuclear medicine specialists to combine the cancer-killing methods of one specialty with the skills of another. Special procedures that employ these cooperative efforts include:
- Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA), which uses high-frequency ultrasound to destroy tumor tissue.
- Radioimmunotherapy (also known as radioactive targeted therapy), a cutting-edge treatment that employs radioactive isotopes to seek out and bind with antibodies attached to cancer cells. The result delivers a systemic dose of anti-cancer medicine to people with lymphoma.
Surgery often augments chemotherapy or radiation treatments and, in addition to removing tumors, may also be used to help diagnose cancer, relieve symptoms, and reconstruct areas damaged by cancer. Surgical specialists at Holy Name can fulfill any operative requirement for oncology patients, including those with general, head and neck, gastrointestinal (encompassing colorectal), and thoracic expertise.
Our surgeons are:
- In step with the trend toward minimally invasive laparoscopic removal of certain early malignancies.
- Current with skin-saving mastectomy techniques and various methods of reconstruction for breast cancer patients.
- Experienced in lymph node mapping, also known as sentinal node biopsy, a procedure that identifies the first lymph node to which breast cancer is likely to spread—avoiding axillary surgery and the resulting complications of unnecessary lymph node removal.
Contact Information
The Regional Cancer Center
At Holy Name Hospital
201-541-5900