Cancer Surgery
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.
Can all cancers be treated with surgery?
It is impossible to remove some cancers surgically, even with cryotherapy. There are cancers of the bloodstream which are impossible to remove with surgery alone. These have to be treated with medicines because some cancers are systemic, meaning surgery is just a local treatment. It's not a regional treatment. It's a local treatment. In order for it to be effective, the problem has to be in one place and localized. It has to be a well-defined location where you know exactly the boundaries of the cancer. Any cancer that is moving outside well-defined boundaries cannot be cured by surgery.
How can cancer spread if I had surgery to remove it?
There are times when you think that the cancer is very localized and you attempt to remove it surgically and when you are right, you will have cured that patient. But there will be times when you think it's localized and in actuality, a few of those cancer cells have made a way distally to spread on a microscopic level that cannot be detected at the time. You may still go ahead and and try to surgically remove that cancer. Unfortunately, that one or two cells that made its way before you did your operation to a distant part may actually survive and grow and be a recurrence on another side of the body. You may not have cured that patient. The problem is you don't really know which of those scenarios you are going to find when you go in at all times.
