Choosing a course of medical treatment depends largely on the cancer type, stage of progression, and location.
Surgery is generally advisable when physicians can safely remove the cancer from the body.
Today, physicians take great care to leave healthy tissue intact and remove only the cancerous portion. For instance, in a breast lumpectomy, surgeons remove the breast tumor and a small area of tissue surrounding it, while leaving most of the breast intact. In situations where the cancerous cells have spread, surgeons sometimes must remove large areas of healthy tissue along with the tumor to insure that no malignancy remains. In these cases, physicians remove lymph nodes from the tumor area because cancer can spread through nodes. If removing all the lymph nodes does not eliminate the malignancy, physicians combine some surgical procedures with either chemotherapy or radiation therapy to kill any malignancy that may remain after surgery.