ABSTRACT
The management of undesirable side effects of chemotherapy is an important part of supportive care in cancer. Although side effects may occur following the administration of any drug, after cytotoxic chemotherapy they are almost inevitable. This results from the nonspecic effect of cytotoxic drugs, which inhibits proliferation not only in tumor cells but also in normal cells. Consequently, the most frequent side effects can be seen in tissues with high proliferative activity (e.g., bone marrow, the epithelium of the gastrointestinal tract, hair follicles). The incidence of other less frequent side effects are connected with the chemical structure of particular drugs or with the mechanism of their action, distribution, metabolism, or excretion.
