If your symptoms are caused by a tumour, cancer treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy may be helpful in relieving them.

Surgery

Surgery can be used to remove part of a tumour in particular areas of the body (such as an airway, or the gullet) so that the particular part of the body can work normally again. Surgery using lasers may sometimes be used to destroy part of a tumour.

Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is sometimes used to reduce the size of a tumour and relieve symptoms. The treatment does not work immediately. Usually it is 7–10 days before it begins to take effect. You may need to take other medicines to control your symptoms during this time.

The dose of radiotherapy used to treat symptoms is generally quite low and the treatment has few side effects other than slight tiredness. However, it can increase symptoms slightly at first, before it starts to reduce them. Radiotherapy may also make you feel tired (fatigued) for some time. The effect on your symptoms will depend on which part of the body the radiotherapy is used to treat. Your doctor can discuss with you the likely side effects and benefits of radiotherapy in your particular situation.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy can also sometimes reduce the size of tumours which will help control and improve symptoms. It may help some people feel better, however it does not work for everyone and may cause side effects that are difficult to deal with. Your doctor can discuss with you whether chemotherapy may be helpful in controlling your symptoms. You may want to know how likely it is to work and what the possible side effects may be, so that you can decide whether chemotherapy would be right for you.

Generally, the fitter a person is, the more likely the treatment is to be helpful and the less likely they are to have distressing side effects. Making decisions about treatment can be difficult. You may need to discuss the benefits and side effects of treatment with your doctor or nurse more than once, before making a decision about whether to have chemotherapy. You can discuss these issues with our nurses or some of the support organisations.

Hormonal therapy

Hormonal therapy can be used to reduce symptoms for some types of cancer. Hormonal therapies can reduce the size of some tumours by changing the levels of particular hormones in the body, or preventing the hormones from attaching to cancer cells.

There are many different types of hormonal therapy and the side effects of each vary, but tend not to be severe. Your doctor can discuss with you whether hormonal therapies may be helpful to you. You can ask how likely the treatment is to work for you and what the possible side effects are.