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Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells. For this treatment, you will see a medical oncologist. This is a doctor who specializes in using drugs to treat cancer. For multiple myeloma, your doctor is likely to give you more than one drug. This is called combination chemotherapy.
You may take these drugs by an IV into a vein or by a pill. Either way, chemotherapy is a systemic treatment because the drugs travel all through the body in the bloodstream. Most people with multiple myeloma have chemotherapy in an outpatient part of the hospital, at the doctor’s office, or at home. In some cases, depending on your health or the drugs you take, you may need to stay in the hospital during treatment.
Chemotherapy is given in cycles. This means you will be treated for a period of time with chemotherapy and then have a rest period. Each treatment and rest period make up one cycle. You’ll likely have more than one cycle of treatment. Your doctor will explain what your treatment plan will be and what you can expect. The length of each treatment period differs depending on the type of drug you take. With many types of chemotherapy, monthly treatments are common. Sometimes you will get chemotherapy more often.
Common Chemotherapy Drug Combinations
A newer combination of these 3 drugs is often the regimen of choice today.
Here’s another popular drug combination.
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Oncovin (vincristine)
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Adriamycin (doxorubicin)
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Decadron (dexamethasone)
These 2 drugs have been combined to treat multiple myeloma since the 1960s. These drugs are usually given together and are taken in pill form.
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Alkeran, L-phenylalanine mustard, L-PAM, L-sarcolysin (melphalan)
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Apo-Prednisone, Deltasone, Orasone (prednisone)
The names of these drugs are usually abbreviated to their first letters. For example, MP is used when melphalan and prednisone are given in combination.
Sometimes a chemotherapy drug is combined with an immunotherapy drug to kill the cancer cells and keep the cancer from growing in the bone marrow. One such combination is the chemotherapy drug Velcade (bortezomib) and the immunotherapy drug Thalomid (thalidomide). It has recently been shown that this combination can work when other treatments stop working. Velcade is also being tested in people newly diagnosed with multiple myeloma.