Can my leukemia be treated with surgery?

Can my leukemia be treated with surgery?

Noam Z. Drazin (Hematologist & Oncologist, Cedars-Sinai Medical Group) gives expert video advice on: Can my leukemia be treated with surgery?; Can leukemia be treated with a bone marrow transplant?; How can I keep my leukemia from coming back? and more...

Leukaemias and other haematologic malignancies are not a surgical disease. A question asked by patients when they have a diagnosis of lymphoma, which is another haematologic disease, is why can't it just be cut out? I think the best answer to that question is that when you have a disease that is so responsive to chemotherapy, then that is the treatment modality that should be used. Surgery with a scalpel, meaning a knife to cut out the reticulate disease, doesn't get at the microscopic disease that needs to be treated with chemotherapy.