Hormonal Therapy
Uses medicines to prevent some tumors from getting the hormones they need to grow.
What is hormonal therapy?
Similar to chemotherapy, hormonal therapy is a type of treatment that uses medicines to fight cancer. These medicines are designed to keep certain types of cancerous cells from getting the natural hormones they need to grow.
How does it work?
There are several medicines that may be used in hormonal therapy, depending on your type of cancer. The medicines stop or slow the growth of the cancer by either preventing your body from producing natural hormones or by altering the function of these hormones in the body.
Tamoxifen, for example, is a type of hormonal therapy medicine that is sometimes used to treat early breast cancers or metastatic breast cancers. The medicine works by blocking the effects of the female hormone, estrogen, which some breast tumors need to grow.
Medicines used in hormonal therapy may be delivered to the bloodstream through a small pellet implanted under the skin, an injection (shot), or a pill taken orally.
Surgery to remove the organs that produce natural hormones is another form of hormonal therapy. The ovaries are the organs in women that produce female hormones estrogen and progesterone. Testicles are the male organs that produce the testosterone hormone.
Hormonal therapy is also often used in combination with other types of chemotherapy.
Who receives hormonal therapy?
Hormonal therapy is most often used in the treatment of breast cancer and prostate cancer.