Loading
The first, most intensive block of treatment, intended to knock the cancer into remission. In leukaemia it is the hospital stay that clears the marrow; in solid tumours it is chemotherapy given before definitive local treatment.
In acute leukaemia, induction (7+3 cytarabine-anthracycline in AML, multi-agent chemotherapy in ALL) aims for a complete remission and is followed by consolidation and sometimes maintenance or transplant; failure to achieve remission ('primary refractory') is the worst prognostic sign. In myeloma, quadruplet induction precedes autologous transplant. In head and neck and nasopharyngeal cancer, induction chemotherapy before chemoradiation improves survival in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (gemcitabine-cisplatin) but not consistently elsewhere. The term overlaps with 'neoadjuvant' when surgery follows.
Shares Complete response (CR) and partial response (PR), Maintenance therapy, Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, Acute myeloid leukaemia.
Shares Complete response (CR) and partial response (PR), Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, Acute myeloid leukaemia.
Shares Maintenance therapy, Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.
Shares Maintenance therapy, Multiple myeloma.
Shares Consolidation therapy, Maintenance therapy.