Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy uses medicines to kill cancer cells. There are three main ways chemotherapy is generally used to treat oesophageal or gastric cancer: before surgery to shrink the tumour (known as neoadjuvant chemotherapy); this is often in combination with radiotherapy (known as chemoradiation), after surgery to reduce the risk of the cancer returning (known as adjuvant chemotherapy), before and after surgery (known as perioperative chemotherapy) and during palliative care, to help slow the advance of the cancer.

Chemotherapy is given orally via tablets or intravenously (into a vein). Chemotherapy can cause unpleasant side effects, including tiredness, nausea and hair loss. These can usually be well controlled with medicines and will usually go away once treatment has finished.