Cancer surgery: Physically Removing Cancer

The prospect of cancer surgery may make you feel anxious. Put your mind at ease by learning more about cancer surgery and how and why it's used.

Whatever cancer treatment is recommended, you're likely to feel some anxiety about your condition and the treatment process. Knowing what to expect can help. Use this information to help you talk with us and ask informed questions.

Cancer surgery, an operation to repair or remove part of your body to diagnose or treat cancer, remains the foundation of cancer treatment. Cancer surgery is used to achieve any number of goals, from diagnosing your cancer, to treating it, to relieving the symptoms it causes. Cancer surgery may be your only treatment, or it may be supplemented with other treatments, such as radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and biological therapy.

How is cancer surgery used in treatment?

Cancer surgery may be used to achieve one or more goals. Common reasons you might undergo cancer surgery include:

Cancer prevention. If there’s reason to believe that you'll develop cancer in certain tissues or organs, we may recommend removing those tissues or organs before cancer develops.

Diagnosis. A form of cancer surgery may be used to remove (biopsy) all or part of a tumo This can be done either using minimal invasion biopsy with a fine needle or with a core needle (ultrasound and or stereotactic), in an outpatient setting. This allows the tumor to be studied under a microscope to determine whether the growth is cancerous (malignant) or noncancerous (benign).

Staging. Cancer surgery helps to define what state your cancer is. Is it early cancer, or advanced cancer? Breast cancer sentinel lymph node mapping and biopsy will tell us if the cancer went to the lymph node or not and will help us to detrmine what stage the cancer has reached. Further tests may be needed to determine your cancer's stage. This will help in deciding what further treatment you will need. Is it one or all of the following: chemo therapy, hormonal therapy, radiation therapy to be used before or after surgery?

Surgical treatment. Cancer surgery is the best chance for a cure, in localized and small cancer tumors which is localized and hasn't spread. In these cases, we may recommend surgery as your primary treatment to remove the cancerous tumor.

Relieving symptoms or side effects. Sometimes surgery is used to improve your quality of life if cancer is wide spead and cannot be removed. Surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible to relieve pain caused by obstructing your bowel and preventing you from eating or moving your bowels.

How is cancer surgery traditionally performed?

Traditionally, the primary purpose of cancer surgery is to physically remove all of it from your body to give you the best chance for survival. Usually this is done by cutting into your body and removing the cancer along with some surrounding tissue to ensure that all of the cancer is removed. Your surgeon may also remove some lymph nodes in the area to determine if the cancer has spread. This helps to assess the chance of your being cancer free, as well as the need for any further treatment.

In the case of breast cancer surgery, Dr. Hassan seeks to do breast conservative surgery (lumpectomy/ partial mastectomy), followed by radiation therapy (partial radiation versus whole radiation of the breast). In some cases when the cancer is too large patient will be referred to have before surgery chemo-radiation to shrink the tumor size and allow for breast conservative therapy.

In remaining cases with large tumors or very small breasts in relation to the size of the tumor, or if the patient cannot or will not take radiation Dr. Hassan will do Mastectomy preserving the muscles under the breast and in all cases conservative breast surgery or total mastectomy sentinel lymph node mapping and biopsy will be performed.

Dr. Hassan uses traditional open methods and he use laproscopic assisted and if needed laser surgery to remove some cancerous tumors.

What can you expect before and after surgery?

In cases of bowel surgery the bowl may need to be cleansed and instruction can be obtained on this website about what kind of preparation is needed prior to your surgery. For instructions for Hospital Bowel surgery: Click Here For instructions for office procedures: Click Here

Preparation. In general, expect to undergo certain tests, such as blood tests, urine tests, X-rays and other imaging tests, in the days preceding your surgery. These tests will help to assess your surgical needs, such as your blood type should you need a transfusion, and identify potential risks, such as infections, that may influence your surgery.

Anesthesia. If you're having surgery, you'll likely need some type of anesthetic. Your options for anesthesia will be based on what type of surgery you're receiving.

Recovery. Depending on your surgery, you may stay in the hospital for a time before going home. We will give you specific directions for your recovery, such as how to care for any wounds, what foods or activities to avoid and what medications to take.

Before surgery, Dr. Hassan will sit down with his patients and discusses with all of them, both those who consult him through the office, or those in the hospital, the diagnosis and treatment options of their condition. Office patients will be given small informative booklets which will be helpful in discussing with them the risks and benefits and alternative methods of the proposed procedure.

He allows pleanty of time to answer questions to their satisfaction. He sometimes recommends a second opinion. He spends lots of time using a white board making extensive drawings to help his patients understand their diagnosis and the management of their condition.

Due to HIPPA regulations Dr. Hassan's office will not give any information regarding the patient's personal or medical condition to anyone except as written in the consent form signed by the patient.