Surgery
When Is Surgery Necessary?
Although most patients will have a biopsy performed, not all cancers require surgical treatment. Some cancers are best treated with chemotherapy or radiation therapy, or both. In some instances, the cancer may be too big or too difficult to remove with surgery.
Your health care team will work with you to decide whether surgery is part of your overall treatment plan. If surgery is necessary, you will undergo a number of tests to determine whether you are an appropriate candidate for surgery.
Diagnosing Cancer With Surgery
One common type of surgery used to help with diagnosing cancer is a biopsy.
A biopsy means taking a tissue sample from your body for examination by a specialist in
a laboratory.
A positive biopsy indicates the presence of cancer.
A negative biopsy may indicate that no cancer is present in the sample.
When surgery is used for treatment, the cancer and some tissue adjacent to the cancer are typically removed. In addition to providing local treatment of the cancer, information gained during surgery is useful in predicting the likelihood of cancer recurrence and whether other treatment modalities will be necessary. Over the years, continuing advances in surgery have led to less invasive, less complicated, and safer procedures. As a result, some surgeries previously requiring hospitalization are now performed safely in an outpatient setting. Other types of surgeries are used to treat cancer once it has been diagnosed..