Cancer Care - Surgical Options

Together, your oncologist, surgeon and family physician will guide you in which cancer treatment options are best for you. Surgery may be an option for many types of cancer diagnosis. Sometimes surgery is used in conjunction with other types of treatment.  

During surgery, your care team will remove the tissue that contains cancerous cells. You and your doctor may choose to take advantage of minimally invasive procedures such as robotic-assisted surgery, which helps you experience all the benefits of surgery along with faster recovery and less pain and scarring.

Common procedures for cancer care include, yet are not limited to:

• Breast: Your surgeon may do a lumpectomy, meaning a small “lump” of breast tissue in the affected area is removed, or a mastectomy, which calls for removing all or most of the breast tissue.
• Prostate: Common surgical procedures for prostate cancer include prostatectomy which is a procedure performed to remove the prostate with our DaVinci Xi surgical robot.  Other options include doing a volume study, and radioactive seed placement.  This is performed in two separate hospital visits, and is coordinated between your urologist and oncologist.  The procedure is called brachytherapy.
• Colon: Colon cancer diagnosis is often discovered during a colonoscopy when a biopsy of tissue or polyp is removed to be examined by a pathologist.  Depending on these results, this may require that the affected portion of the colon to be removed.  Colon resections are performed with both minimally invasive and robotic techniques at Spencer Hospital by our highly skilled general surgeons.  Routinely this will result in an inpatient stay of two to five days depending on your overall health status. 
• Thyroid: Thyroid cancer can result in the need to remove part of, or all of your thyroid gland.   This is performed at Spencer Hospital by one of our general surgeons, and often results in an overnight stay.