Why should a cancer patient undergo surgery in the first place?
That’s a fair question. Lets answer it first. Alright? Here we go.
Surgery is the removal of the tumor and the surrounding tissue. It is the oldest type of cancer therapy and remains an effective treatment for many types of cancer today.
Whether surgery is an option depends on the type of cancer, the stage and location of the tumor, and patient’s general health.
Surgery is not used for some types of cancer such as cancer of the blood system (leukaemia), cancer of the lymphatic system (lymphoma), or if the cancer cells are spread throughout the body.
If cancer has spread, surgery alone might not be the best treatment.
A combination treatment that reaches all parts of your body; such as chemotherapy, biological therapy or hormone therapy may be prescribed.
Radiotherapy might also be used to shrink tumors and help to control symptoms. This can be had in combination with surgery or by itself depending on advise of your Doctor.
What are the Goals of a Cancer Surgery, commonly?
A cancer surgery tries to achieve one of these goals commonly.
1. Diagnostic:
For most types of cancer, a biopsy is the only way to make a definitive diagnosis. During a surgical biopsy, the surgeon makes a small cut in the diseased area and removes some, or all of the suspicious tissue.
2. Staging:
Staging surgery is performed to find out the size of the tumor and where it has spread. During this surgery, the doctor often removes some lymph nodes near the cancer to find out if it has spread. Lymph nodes are tiny, peanut-shaped organs that help fight infection.
3. Tumor removal or curative:
This is the most common goal of a surgery where the entire tumor and some of the surrounding healthy tissue called the margin is removed.
Tumor removal may be the only treatment, or it may be combined with Chemotherapy, Radiation therapy or Other treatments, which may be given before or after surgery
4. Debulking:
Sometimes, the surgeon cannot remove the entire tumor or removing it might cause too much damage to the body. In these situations, surgery is used to remove as much of the tumor as possible.
5. Palliation:
Palliative surgery is used to relieve side effects caused by a tumor. It plays an important role in improving quality of life for patients with advanced cancer or widespread disease. For example, surgery may be used to: relieve pain, restore physical function, stop bleeding.
Open and Keyhole (Laparoscopic) Approaches to Surgery:
For cancer surgery of digestive organs such as rectum, colon, intestine, liver, pancreas, bile duct, stomach, oesophagus etc. either of the Open or Keyhole approach may be used.
The open approach involves an 8 to 10 inch incision to open the abdomen and perform the surgery in open view of the surgical team. The laparoscopic approach creates three to five miniature incisions (each having a length of one rice grain to three rice grains long) instead of the one larger incision.
In the laparoscopic method, a small cable (the laparoscope), connected to a video camera, is inserted through the incision. This gives us a magnified view of the patient’s internal organs on a television screen next to the operating table. The entire operation is performed “inside” the abdomen, after gas has been used to expand it, with the instruments inserted through the various small incisions.
What are the Benefits of Keyhole Cancer Surgery?
Firstly, all keyhole surgeries provide these obvious advantages to patients compared to open surgery:
☆ Less pain
☆ Shorter hospitalization
☆ Quicker return to activity and work
☆ Minimal scaring
☆ Lower rates of blood loss
☆ Lower rates of wound infections and other complications
☆ Lower rates of subsequent hernia development
Secondly, in case of a cancer surgery:
☆ Keyhole approach extracts tumors with strict compliance to oncological principles and well within the evidence based guidelines while producing superior outcomes than open surgery.
There are clear guidelines by reputed world bodies such as SAGES(Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons) and NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, UK) for cancer surgeries by keyhole approach.
☆ Sometimes patients are scared that keyhole approach may increase the recurrence of tumors. This is again proved wrong by many prominent publications. We also found that sharing results of our patients earlier undergone keyhole cancer surgery too helps resolve this anxiety in new patients.
☆ Our 12 years of experience with over 2000 patients abundantly proves that keyhole cancer surgery not only provides short term benefits like less scar, pain, early return to work etc. but also offers long term benefits of disease free survival and overall survival rates.
Our approach to Keyhole Cancer Surgery
Just to share with you, we committed ourselves as early as 2004 to pioneer and develop laparoscopic or keyhole cancer surgery. Those were the nascent days of this technique and we were one of the very few centers to pursue it.
Even today, in spite of prominent studies in world literature favoring keyhole surgery for cancer compared to open surgery, very few skilled surgeons can safely perform them as skills needed are demanding.
There are two key reasons for leadership of our center in keyhole cancer surgery.
First, our persistent focus on mastering keyhole surgical skills.
Second, large and careful investments to to build a world class center.
Effective cancer treatment is not offered by one Doctor. It requires a Multi Disciplinary Team.
Our cancer treatment team includes 4 MCh Surgical Gastroenterologists, 3 Surgeons, 2 Medical Gastroenterologists, 1 Medical Oncologist, 1 Radiation Oncologist and 2 Onco Surgeons.
We have also initiated CANCURE project, to spread awareness about prevention and early detection of cancers. The project also aims at treating and rehabilitating poor patients with help from Govt and NGOs.
This website is another place where we plan to post regular updates useful for patients and lay public.
Trust you found the write-up useful.
If you have any further questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Take Care
