About India Cancer Guide

India Cancer Guide is an information site for people making cancer treatment decisions in India. We cover how treatment options differ, what they cost, how clinical trial access actually works, and how to get a second opinion.

Most people arrive here a few days after a diagnosis, holding reports they cannot read, facing a decision they did not expect to make. We write for that moment: plainly, with the numbers attached, and without pretending the evidence is tidier than it is.

This site does not give medical advice. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prognosis, or a treatment recommendation for you. What treatment suits a person depends on their pathology, stage, biomarkers, organ function and history, none of which an article can know. Use this to prepare better questions for a qualified oncologist who has seen your reports. Do not use it to decide anything by yourself.

What we cover

Treatment approaches. What an approach involves, which patients it has been shown to help, the published response and toxicity figures, and what it asks of you in practice.

Access. How to reach something once you know you want it: trial eligibility and the Clinical Trials Registry – India, biomarker testing before a plan is fixed, second-opinion and tumour-board processes, and compassionate-access routes.

Cost. What published and hospital-quoted ranges look like, which government schemes apply, where biosimilars change the arithmetic, and which costs get left out of a first estimate.

Where care is delivered. Institution-level descriptions of what centres offer and who they suit. We describe capabilities. We do not rank clinicians.

How we source

Every clinical claim is tied to a primary source, cited beside the claim rather than gathered at the bottom. Our order of preference:

1. Indian registries and regulators: the Clinical Trials Registry – India (CTRI), ICMR, CDSCO, and the National Cancer Grid.
2. Published protocols and outcome data from Indian tertiary centres, including Tata Memorial Centre, AIIMS and Cancer Institute (WIA).
3. International reference bodies: the US National Cancer Institute, WHO and IARC including GLOBOCAN, and the ESMO and NCCN guidelines.
4. Peer-reviewed literature, read and cited directly rather than through press coverage of it.

When we cite a conference presentation or a preprint we say so, because neither has completed peer review. When a figure comes from a hospital's own materials we attribute it to that hospital instead of presenting it as independent.

What we will not do

• No prognosis. We will not tell you how long anyone has, or how likely a treatment is to work for you.
• No treatment recommendations. We will not tell you which regimen to take or which drug to ask for.
• No clinician rankings. We describe what a centre offers. We do not score doctors, and a centre's position in a list carries no quality judgement.
• No guaranteed prices. Every cost figure is a published or reported range, with the date we checked it. Real cost is individual and shifts with regimen, number of cycles, complications and location. Confirm in writing with the hospital before planning around any number you read here.
• No miracle framing. We do not describe experimental treatment as a cure, and we report toxicity next to response.

Commercial relationships

Some organisations and clinicians described on this site have a commercial relationship with the publisher, and some articles are commissioned. That relationship does not buy a clinical claim. Cited evidence, reported toxicity and stated limitations read the same whoever is mentioned, and competing providers are named and described on their own terms.

If you are weighing a provider you found here, treat this as a starting point for your own checks rather than an endorsement. Verify any clinician's registration with the relevant State Medical Council or the National Medical Commission, and ask the hospital directly about anything that matters to your decision.

Editorial process and corrections

Articles are written and edited by the editorial team named on this page. Each one records the date its facts were last checked. We re-check cost figures, scheme eligibility and trial status on a rolling basis, because all three move.

To be explicit about a limit of this site: we do not review individual cases, and an article is not a clinical opinion.

If you find an error, or a figure that has gone stale, write to us. We will correct it and date the correction.

Limitations

Evidence in oncology moves faster than any site can track, and much of the strongest trial data comes from populations that are not Indian. Where Indian data exists we use it and say so. Where it does not, we flag the gap instead of quietly generalising. Cost information varies by city, hospital and insurer, so the ranges here will not match every quote you are given.

Once more, because it matters: this is information, not advice. If you are deciding something, take it to an oncologist who has your reports.