Does surgery make cancer spread faster because of oxygen exposure?
No, it's not true that exposing a tumor to the air can make cancer spread faster. I hear this fear all the time from patients, it's one of the most common cancer myths. People seem to think that when you "open up" the body during surgery it somehow "stirs things up," and can cause tumor cels to spread but that's not the case at all.
When cancer metastasizes to other parts of the body, it does so because cancer cells get into the blood stream and travel to another part of the body where they lodge and begin to grow. (Although only a very small percentage of free cancer cells do actually take hold and cause a new tumor.) Exposure to air during surgery does not have any effect on this process. All surgery does is excise an area of cancerous cells from a particular part of the body so that only healthy cells remain.
perhaps that myth is still around is because when surgery is done, the doctors find more cancer in other organs. when he tells the patient and family that more cancer has been found, they feel that is spread immediately when the body was open to the air. I agree it it is a myth. I am not a doctor
I got this theory from people that were not told they had cancer, so that was no surgery performed and they have been living with it and not knowing it. Maybe the fear that takes over once you know makes your body weak and more cancer shows up. My dad once he knew it, starting dying with surgery, chemo and radiation.
really always heard, and known people with cancer,whom after opened up passed in a very short time,really makes me leary of ,biopsies,scarry enough, suspecting cancer,big decisions ,i want all of this life i can have ,thanks for listening hw here
@ hwcontractor ... I hear what the other responses are and believe them, I guess. But like you mention, there's a part of me that is still very skeptical as to the truth behind this. My Aunt just past yesterday, 2.4.11, she was "up and about" and talking to us the day before her Bladder Cancer sugery, went in for the surgery last week on 1.26.11 and literally was incoherent ever since, and died 9 days later. Doesn't make sense to me ... we're confident she would have lived longer ... she wasn't on her "death bed" the day before the surgery when we talked to her...
I have had 36 surgeries in my lifetime. I have pancreatic cancer and create 7 different types of tumors, most of which are neuroendocrine and biochemically functional (in other words the tumors secrete proteins that change my biochemistry and cause suffering). I have lived 5 years with active, stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Without carefully planned and executed surgical intervention by my medical team at the Mayo Clinic, I do not think I could have lived this long with cancer. I hope one day to be in remission, but I know that is improbable. But, I now also know that a person can continue to live with cancer and have an OK life.
I think Cancer spreading starts at the time of Biopsy CTC (circulating tumor cells) invade the blood stream, and if the Machropages can not take care of distrying them, the person will have a secondary Cancer.
Hi this is only a belief in our ways as a New Zealand kiwi (maori) we were alway told that yes it does spread only our race that iknow of believe it there is no way to keep it secured once it is open
