Enormous progress has been made with drug therapies for tumours in recent years, and the range of available medicines has been greatly expanded. A large number of new drugs has improved the options for therapy substantially, and they now play a major role in the treatment of tumours. The chances of a cure for patients with operable tumours have been improved significantly by the use of additional (adjuvant) therapies before or after surgery. The survival of patients with advanced tumours and metastases can often be extended significantly and, above all, their quality of life can be improved perceptibly.

The following substance categories are available:

• Cytostatic drugs: substances that inhibit tumour growth
• Hormone therapies: hormone therapy or hormone withdrawal is a treatment principle used in breast cancer and prostate cancer, for example. 
• Targeted therapies: Monoclonal antibodies and substances that block specific growth signals in tumour cells have been developed into many new and well-tolerated therapies in the past few years.

Drug therapies are administered on an out-patient or in-patient basis. In order to provide the greatest possible level of safety in administering drug therapy for tumours, we use an electronic prescribing system (CATO) to communicate with the hospital pharmacy, where the therapy for each patient is produced and checked individually. Specially trained nursing staff ensure that therapy is administered optimally in pleasant surroundings.

We participate in a wide range of clinical studies so that state-of-the-art therapies can be made available to our patients. These are performed under the supervision of the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research (www.sakk.ch). We also have extensive experience with the early use, in keeping with the latest scientific findings, of new substances which are not yet on the market.