Is surgery always necessary to treat cancer?

Is surgery always necessary to treat cancer?

Surgery is one modality, one very, very important modality, for treating cancer, but it is not always necessary. There are a multitude of cancers where surgery is not the treatment of choice, but it may be radiation or chemotherapy. In fact, there's no role for surgery in those treatments except for possibly to make a diagnosis and that might be in the form of a small biopsy. On the other hand, there are times when surgery is definitely warranted and it's based on the tumor and the problem at hand.