I’ve got a grandpa in the hospital for bladder cancer (benign, fortunately) and I’m wondering why they can’t just remove his bladder and put in a nee one or an artificial one.
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Organ transplants require going on lifelong immune suppressants that leave you vulnerable to sickness and only delay the time until your body’s immune system destroys the new organ and requires you to either get a new one or die of organ failure.
They’re last resort measures that keep people alive who would otherwise die because their current organ is either already dead or about to fail. They aren’t really operations of convenience and if removing the whole organ would cure the cancer, it’s generally better to try to just remove the cancer from the organ instead.
A lot of the time they do. That’s what a mastectomy is, for example, and it’s not uncommon to lose a limb.
But as you imply, you can’t remove vital organs unless there’s a viable replacement, which is not always the case.
Additionally…. honestly, once you have cancer you’re pretty much at high risk for more cancer, even different types. So you’re at high risk for organ replacement (we don’t really have a surplus of organ donations).
1) There are many organs other than what you listed that are necessary for life.
2) Not all of them have artificial replacements. And artificial replacements don’t work as well, generally speaking. So there is degradation and ultimately failure.
3) Not all organs are transplantable. Even then, transplants require extensive, life long treatment and monitoring. Not easy if the patient is older who might not survive the major surgery or the recovery period.
4) Cancer spreads. If the cancer is caught early enough, then it might be possible to excise the cancer and with some additional treatment, there might be a reasonable recovery. This is quite commonly done. Unfortunately, many cancers are difficult to detect early and by the time it is detected it might have already spread and can no longer be simply removed.
5) Quality of life. This is a tough one. Major surgical and medical intervention for cancer is painful, difficult and tough on the patient. There is no guarantee of success. Especially for much older people, the decision might be that the price to be paid in terms of pain and suffering of the treatment and the low probability of any success means nothing can really be done. (There is a lot of data that indicates that aggressive treatments for some cancers might only extend life for a few years – much of it in pain and in the hospital)
Wake Forest has actually grown bladders for transplant, but they’re grown from the person’s own cells, making the risk of rejection almost zero. However, this takes time, as well as money. I don’t think you can use cells that already have cancer detected, otherwise you’d probably end up with a new cancerous bladder. A bladder is a comparatively easy organ, too, next to a liver or a kidney. Maybe one day, we’ll see it, but it won’t be anytime soon. Plus, always remember, the treatment is worth more than the cure.
I feel the need to clarify that benign tumors are by definition non-cancerous. I can elaborate if you would like.
To answer your main question, surgery to remove the mass and affected organ is the first line of treatment for many cancers. Transplants are risky, so it’s preferable to take out the cancerous part of the organ versus removing and replacing the whole organ. This can be organ specific, though. As other comments have mentioned, certain cancers like breast cancer are more commonly treated by removing the entire organ. In contrast, a patient with colon cancer will more likely just have the affected section of the colon removed. This is decided for cancers based on the importance of the organ, feasibility of transplant, and decades of statistics describing survival rate based on treatment type.
Removing the cancerous organ, however, does not always cure the cancer. If the cancer has metastasized or is beginning to metastasize (micrometastasis) then removing the organ will not be curative.
I feel the need to clarify that benign tumors are by definition non-cancerous. I can elaborate if you would like.
To answer your main question, surgery to remove the mass and affected organ is the first line of treatment for many cancers. Transplants are risky, so it’s preferable to take out the cancerous part of the organ versus removing and replacing the whole organ. This can be organ specific, though. As other comments have mentioned, certain cancers like breast cancer are more commonly treated by removing the entire organ. In contrast, a patient with colon cancer will more likely just have the affected section of the colon removed. This is decided for cancers based on the importance of the organ, feasibility of transplant, and decades of statistics describing survival rate based on treatment type.
Removing the cancerous organ, however, does not always cure the cancer. If the cancer has metastasized or is beginning to metastasize (micrometastasis) then removing the organ will not be curative.
Cancers are removed via surgery *all the time*. Either the tumor itself, or part or all of an organ (depending on the organ) can be removed. A bladder removal is not uncommon in people with bladder cancer, although there is no such thing as an artificial bladder to replace it with. we can’t just remove any organ like it’s no big deal and we certainly don’t have artificial ones to take their place in most cases.
A lot of times though, the cancer has spread beyond its original location, at which point surgery is not longer going to be useful. Any cancer can spread to other parts of the body. That is, by definition, what cancers do. If the cancer is confined to one spot that is operable, great, but if it’s spread to the lymphatic system and other organs, removing the original organ that was the source of the cancer won’t do a thing.
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