Cancer is a disease in which cells grow uncontrollably and disrupt the normal functioning of cells (National Cancer Institute, 2021) These clumps of cancerous cells are called tumors and can occur in relatively any part of one’s body from a multitude of environmental or genetic factors.
In just 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 599,589 patients in the United States died of cancer. The extreme lethality of cancer has led to the advancement of treatments that help destroy cancer cells and remove tumors from the body. Surgery is a common procedure that involves cutting out and removing a segment of cancer cells. However, sometimes even if all of the cancerous cells are removed, the patient still faces a variety of implications.
Surgeons cannot simply extract tumors from the body because some cancers are inoperable, patients may undergo recurrence, and the complexity of the disease may make the removal of cancer impractical.
Inoperable Cancer
While surgical operations can be carried out to eliminate tumors, some cancers cannot be removed if they originate in a liquid state, surround critical nervous tissue, or include patients that are not cleared for surgery.
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in a post reviewed by surgical oncologist Monica M. Bertagnolli writes that “liquid cancers” that originate in abnormal bone marrow cannot be treated because of their dispersal throughout the body. Because they are not “a lump, or mass or cancerous tissue,” they cannot be safely removed (2019).
Likewise, some cancers cannot be removed because they are located near critical tissue that is required for a patient’s survival. Bertagnolli writes that these tumors are “impossible to surgically extract without harming the patient” because removing the cancer would also include damaging that segment of vital tissue (2019).
Another implication is that some patients may not be operable without putting the patient at high risk. simply not recover from the surgery due to their age and weakened immune system. The damage after the surgery may be too severe for the body to heal from especially for older patients with weakened immune systems. Heart surgeon Giovanni Ciuffo describes that patients too old or frail should reconsider their chances of survival with and without the surgery. The risks imposed on the patient if they cannot recover may be life-threatening (n.d.).
Cancer Recurrence
Another implication of simply extracting the tumor from the body is that the cancer has a probability of returning or recurring. Particularly regarding lung cancer, In a review done by Hidetaka Uranmoto and Fumihiro Tanaka, surgeons at the University of Occupational and Environmental Health in Japan, “30% to 55% of patients with NSCLC [lung cancer] develop recurrence and die fo their disease despite curative resection [removal]” (2013). Likewise, another study led by surgeon David Fedor at Perelman School of Medicine found that 24% of patients had a recurrence of lung cancer after surgery (2013).
While these studies only featured lung cancer patients, further data support the presence of cancer recurrence after surgical removal. Andrea S. Blevins Primeau, an oncology researcher from the Cancer Therapy Advisor, using a collection of studies, demonstrates the statistics related to cancer recurrence after removal. High recurrence is common in cancers such as ovarian cancer (85%), bladder cancer (50%), and pancreatic cancer (36-46%). Blevins Primeau also lists recurrence statistics in over 15 other types of cancer (2019).
Late-stage Implications
Even if the cancer is possible to remove from the body, in more advanced stages of cancer, when it has spread throughout the body, it is impractical to have a surgical operation on every single tumor in every infected organ and around the bloodstream. This includes regional tumors, with cancer spread to periphery organs, or distant tumors, with cancer spread throughout the whole body.
The Cancer Trends Progress Report from the National Cancer Institute that over ⅓ of patients are diagnosed with cancer at later stages. Nearly 32.1% of female breast cancer patients are diagnosed with regional or distant-stage cancer. Of all lung cancer diagnoses, 20.3% percent were regional and 45.5% percent were distant. Colon cancer diagnoses include 36.2% regional and 22.8% distant cancers (2019). With other cancer diagnoses listed, in some cases such as colon and lung cancer, over 50% of patients will have difficulty removing their cancer because multiple regions of the body are infected.
Cancer cannot simply be removed from the body because some patients have inoperable tumors, a probability of cancer recurrence, and too advanced stages of cancer in which tumor removal is impractical. These factors pose a threat to effective cancer treatment. There is a need of refining surgical procedures to not damage critical tissue and to become less invasive so that more older patients can recover from it.
Likewise, therapeutic methods must be placed to prevent cancer recurrence so that the patient can no longer suffer from secondary tumors; this may include additional radiation, drug, immuno, or chemotherapy that is taken by the patient after their surgery. These cancer-eliminating agents will monitor the site and quickly remove any growing cancer cells before tumor formation.
To reduce the number of diagnoses at later stages, more effective screening methods are to be enforced to identify and treat the disease at earlier stages of cancer. When the tumor has not spread to any other regions of the body as is localized, it is easier to get rid of by removing or shrinking it.
OMG THIS IS SO COOL!!!!!
Yesss I remember learning about cancer cells forming tumors…I recall something where the cancerous tumor spreads because it is metastatic, and cells drift off to another part of the body and make another tumor there?