Medical Oncology

Your medical oncologist at St. Peter’s Health is a key part of your cancer care team.

Your medical oncologist coordinates all your cancer-fighting drugs and medical therapies. If you need additional therapies, your medical oncologist works in collaboration with your radiation oncologist and surgeon.

Cancer Medical Therapies at St. Peter’s Health

Your team will recommend the most effective therapies for your situation. Below are some of the potential therapies they may recommend.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to treat your cancer. Chemo can be used:

Alone, as the only form of therapy
Before or after cancer surgery
With radiation

At St. Peter’s, our chemo infusion center offers:

22 chemo infusion treatment chairs with massage, heat and their own TVs
Five private infusion rooms
Nurses who are oncology and chemo certified
Volunteers who make sure anyone going through chemo infusion is pampered with food and drinks
A view of the Meditation Garden during infusion
Frozen mitts and frozen booties during infusion; these are used to alleviate the common chemo side effect of neuropathy, which causes nerve tingling, numbness or pain
Intrathecal chemotherapy, the delivery of chemo directly into the cerebrospinal fluid

Hormonal Therapy

Hormone therapy uses drugs that block hormone production or change the way hormones work.
Targeted Therapy

Targeted therapy is designed to treat only the cancer cells and minimize damage to normal, healthy cells.
Cancer treatments that “target” cancer cells may reduce treatment–related side effects and improve outcomes.

Biological Therapy, including Immunotherapy

Biological therapy uses the body’s immune system to kill cancer cells.
Biological therapies include interferon, interleukin, monoclonal antibodies, colony stimulating factors (cytokines), and vaccines.
Immunotherapy is a form of biological therapy.
Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) therapy is a form of immunotherapy injected directly into the bladder.
At St. Peter’s, we typically use immunotherapy to treat lung cancer; melanoma; prostate cancer; colon cancer; lymphoma; and breast cancer.