chemotherapy
- 1Treatment that uses chemicals to kill cancerous cells or stop them from multiplying and spreading in a patient.
Her oncologist recommended chemotherapy before surgery to shrink the tumor.
Many patients lose their hair while undergoing chemotherapy.
Note
This is the meaning most speakers intend, and a bare mention of chemotherapy now calls it up. The drugs are cytotoxic. They exploit the faster division of cancer cells, but healthy tissues that divide quickly are struck too, which is why hair loss so often comes with treatment. The usual verb is undergo, and chemotherapy may be given before surgery to shrink a tumor.
- 2Any treatment that uses chemical agents to act therapeutically against a disease state.
Early chemotherapy against syphilis used compounds containing arsenic.
Researchers developed chemotherapy to combat parasitic diseases in the tropics.
Note
The older, wider meaning, from which the cancer sense later narrowed. Built simply from chemo- and therapy, it takes in chemical attacks on infections and parasites as readily as on tumors. As a mass noun it names the approach, and as a count noun, chemotherapies, it names particular treatments. Because the cancer sense now dominates, name the target when you mean this one: chemotherapy against syphilis.
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Origin
Formed from the prefix "chemo-" combined with "therapy."