Cancer Surgery
Surgery is used to diagnose, stage, and treat cancer, and certain cancer-related symptoms. Whether a patient is a candidate for surgery depends on factors such as the type, size, location, grade, and stage of the tumor, as well as general health factors such as age, physical fitness, and whether the patient has other illnesses or conditions.
Surgery may also be an option to repair damage to skin, bones, and other tissue caused by cancer or by cancer treatment. Surgery may also be a palliative treatment to remove obstructions in the lungs or throat or remove tumors that are causing pain.
The Main Types of Cancer Surgery
This is also known as a biopsy. It helps your doctor know if a tumor is cancerous. Your surgeon will cut into your skin to remove some of the suspicious tissue. There are two main types:
Incisional, which removes just a piece of the area
Excisional, which removes the entire thing (for example, a skin mole or a breast lump)
Staging
This allows your cancer specialist to figure out the size of your tumor. Usually, your surgeon will also remove the lymph nodes — tiny bean-shaped organs that help fight infection — near the tumor as well. This will help them find out how much your cancer has spread.
Once they have these results, your medical team can use them to figure out the best treatment for you, as well as your prognosis (chances for a full recovery). Laparoscopy is an often-used staging procedure. This is when your surgeon puts a camera through a small cut to examine a part of your body, such as an ovary, and remove tissue.
Curative
This operation removes an entire tumor and some of the healthy tissue that surrounds it. An example of this is the removal of the thyroid gland for thyroid cancer. Sometimes, it’s the only treatment you need. Other times, the cancer has spread past that one area, so you’ll need other treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation.
Debulking
This removes only part of a cancer tumor. This is done when taking out the entire tumor may damage an organ or the whole body. Instead, doctors take out as much of the tumor as they can before they use other treatments like radiation therapy or chemotherapy. It’s often used for advanced ovarian cancer and some lymphomas. The idea is that if at least part of the tumor is gone before these other treatments, they’ll work better.
Palliative
This type isn’t a cure, but a way to ease symptoms of an advanced cancer. It can greatly improve your quality of life. Examples include surgery to relieve pressure on a nerve or your spinal cord, or remove a growth that’s blocked your intestines. Doctors also use it to relieve pain that doesn’t respond to medication.
Supportive
These procedures help make it easier for you to get other types of cancer treatment. For example, your doctor can put a catheter — a thin, flexible tube — into a vein and connect it to a port under your skin to give you medication. Or they can insert a feeding tube directly into your stomach to deliver drugs and nutrition if your cancer or its treatments make it tough to eat.
