Now, I found this personally interesting:
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When US adults were polled about certain erroneous cancer ‘myths’, the most widely believed misconception was that surgical removal of a cancer can cause it to spread throughout the body.
The next most common misconception? A cure for cancer already exists but it is being withheld from the public in order to increase profits.
The new findings, which appear in the medical journal Cancer, come from a telephone survey of 957 randomly selected adults who reported never having been diagnosed with cancer.
I found it personally interesting because the surgeon who operated on my father used it as an excuse for not doing a biopsy before the extensive surgery: “It could spread the cancer.”
So if they want to know who to blame, they can start with the medical profession.
The grain of truth to “surgical removal of a cancer can cause it to spread throughout the body” is this:
The main tumor likes being the main tumor. So, even though there may already metastaces (secondary tumors), the growth of the metastaces is suppressed by the main tumor’s systemic producion of ‘anti-angiogenesis’ compounds.
That is, the main tumor manufactures chemical compounds that encourge blood vessel creation local to it, but also produces chemicals that *suppress* blood vessel creation throughout the rest of the body, thereby keeping the metastaces in check.
Surgically remove “the cancer”, ie the main tumor, and you also remove the suppressor of the metastaces. Some period of time later, the fact that the cancer has spread becomes apparent, and the misinterpretation becomes that the removal of the main tumor “caused” the spread.
It didn’t cause it, but it did facilitate it in a way.
Now, this suggests a treatment for cancer. If one could reproduce those anti-angiogenic compounds, one could suppress the blood vessel creation of the main tumor (or all the tumors). Many of the experimental drugs we read about these days are, by one mechanism or another, anti-angiogenic compounds. Starve the tumor of blood, kill the tumor.
I’m with you. I was told by doctors treating my breast cancer that if the primary cancer is removed, existing metastases may be able to grow their own arteries more effectively. I hammered them on it pretty hard, as I consdered not having my lump removed (it had been pathologically disappeared with chemo at that point) because it might make mets more of a problem.
So maybe those doctors were lying, huh?
I was under the impression that it was called “tumor implantation” and was a risk, especially in laparoscopic surgery.
FUP on Robert Earle’s point.
I guess when you’re dealing with a cancer that can take years to manifest mets, the difference between microscopic existing mets and new mets may be difficult to distinguish–particularly if there’s no science to find the mets.
Well it was the doctor who said that the surgery for colon cancer caused a friend to then get lung cancer, lymphatic cancer, cancer of the spine and brain, and a 6×6x4 plot of earth. So is he lying, giving out misinformation, or speaking the best he knows — as do most people?