Chemotherapy

Overview

Chemotherapy is a drug treatment that uses powerful chemicals to kill fast-growing cells in your body.

Chemotherapy is most often used to treat cancer, since cancer cells grow and multiply much more quickly than most cells in the body.

Why it's done

Chemotherapy is used to kill cancer cells in people with cancer.

There are a variety of settings in which chemotherapy may be used in people with cancer:

• To cure the cancer without other treatments. Chemotherapy can be used as the primary or sole treatment for cancer.