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5 treatment settings, 5 with more than one named option. Each section lays out the options the standard of care names, what each is for, the trials behind them with their recorded results, the side effects and cautions on record, and questions to ask. Built from the cancer page's standard-of-care rows; nothing here is advice for your case.
hCG, chest CT, brain MRI, abdominal imaging, pelvic Doppler ultrasound and FIGO scoring; genotyping where the antecedent pregnancy is unclear.
A CT scan is a fast 3D X-ray that shows the size and shape of tumours and whether they have spread.
MRI uses a strong magnet and radio waves, with no ionising radiation, to picture soft tissue in finer contrast than CT, so it is the standard scan for brain tumours, prostate, rectal cancer staging, liver lesions and breast screening in high-risk women. It is slow, expensive and blurred by movement.
Ultrasound uses sound waves to make live pictures; it is cheap, safe, and used to guide needles into lumps.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
EMA-CO (etoposide, methotrexate, actinomycin D alternating with cyclophosphamide and vincristine) until hCG normalises plus at least three consolidation cycles.
Etoposide is a chemotherapy from the mayapple plant, essential to curing testicular cancer (BEP), treating small-cell lung cancer, lymphomas, childhood sarcomas and leukaemias, and used in transplant conditioning.
The 1948 antifolate that produced the first chemotherapy remissions in childhood leukaemia and the first cure of a solid tumour; still essential in ALL, lymphoma, osteosarcoma and CNS lymphoma.
The first antibiotic used as an anticancer drug (1954) and still the core of chemotherapy for Wilms tumour, rhabdomyosarcoma and gestational trophoblastic disease.
Cyclophosphamide is an alkylating chemotherapy that damages DNA in dividing cells. It is part of CHOP for lymphoma, AC for breast cancer and VAC for childhood sarcomas, clears lymphocytes before CAR-T and prevents graft-versus-host disease after transplant; bladder bleeding, infertility and secondary leukaemia are its harms.
A plant-derived chemotherapy from the Madagascar periwinkle that has been in almost every childhood leukaemia and lymphoma regimen since the 1960s.
Cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs (platinums, antimetabolites, microtubule agents and topoisomerase inhibitors) kill rapidly dividing cells by damaging DNA or the mitotic spindle. They still cure testicular cancer, lymphoma and leukaemia, and they are the warhead inside antibody-drug conjugates, but a narrow margin between effective and toxic doses is their limitation.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
Induction low-dose etoposide and cisplatin for one to three cycles before EMA-CO to prevent early death from haemorrhage and organ failure.
Etoposide is a chemotherapy from the mayapple plant, essential to curing testicular cancer (BEP), treating small-cell lung cancer, lymphomas, childhood sarcomas and leukaemias, and used in transplant conditioning.
Cisplatin is the original platinum chemotherapy, discovered by accident in 1965; it cures testicular cancer and makes radiation work better in cervical and head and neck cancer.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
High-dose systemic and intrathecal methotrexate within EMA-CO, with whole-brain or stereotactic radiotherapy or craniotomy for bleeding or single lesions.
The 1948 antifolate that produced the first chemotherapy remissions in childhood leukaemia and the first cure of a solid tumour; still essential in ALL, lymphoma, osteosarcoma and CNS lymphoma.
IMRT and IGRT shape the radiation beam to the tumour's outline from multiple angles and check the patient's position with a scan before every session, so surrounding organs receive less dose. Fewer, larger doses are now standard in breast and prostate cancer, but a low-dose bath still spreads across normal tissue.
Stereotactic body radiotherapy converges multiple beams with sub-millimetre accuracy to deliver tumour-destroying doses in one to five outpatient sessions, doing the job of surgery for inoperable early lung cancer and for metastases in liver, spine and brain. Tumour size and location limit its use, and late toxicity is a concern near the central airways.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.
EP-EMA or TP/TE; resection of a resistant focus (hysterectomy, lung wedge); pembrolizumab or avelumab; high-dose chemotherapy with autologous rescue in exceptional cases.
Etoposide is a chemotherapy from the mayapple plant, essential to curing testicular cancer (BEP), treating small-cell lung cancer, lymphomas, childhood sarcomas and leukaemias, and used in transplant conditioning.
Cisplatin is the original platinum chemotherapy, discovered by accident in 1965; it cures testicular cancer and makes radiation work better in cervical and head and neck cancer.
A microtubule poison discovered in the Pacific yew tree, among the most used chemotherapies in breast, lung, and ovarian cancer.
Pembrolizumab is a PD-1 blocking antibody approved in more than 40 settings, from melanoma and lung cancer to the first tumour-agnostic approval for mismatch-repair-deficient tumours in 2017, and before and after surgery in triple-negative breast cancer. A subcutaneous form arrived in 2025, and it is the backbone partner for ADCs and personalised neoantigen vaccines.
Avelumab is a PD-L1 blocker given as maintenance after chemotherapy for advanced bladder cancer, which lengthened survival by about seven months.
Autologous stem cell transplant collects the patient's own blood-forming stem cells, gives melphalan or another chemotherapy at a dose that would otherwise destroy the marrow, then returns the cells to rebuild it. It is standard consolidation in myeloma and for relapsed lymphoma, though CAR-T has displaced it in early-relapsing large B-cell lymphoma.
PET and CT in one machine, so hot spots on the PET are pinned to exact locations on the CT.
No trial record is attached to this row yet. The trials tab lists what is recruiting and the landmark trials for this cancer.
| Side effect | Any grade | Grade 3+ |
|---|---|---|
| Hypothyroidism (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 8% | - |
| Pneumonitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 3.4% | - |
| Colitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 1.7% | - |
| Hepatitis (immune-mediated) · Pooled monotherapy data, >2,800 patients | 0.7% | - |
Rates from the label or pivotal trial as recorded on the product page; each grade 3+ figure links to its source.
Add these to your appointment list, or take the full question set for this cancer.