If you have cancer in a certain organ (like liver cancer) why can’t you just remove the infected organ and be cancerfree again?
In: Biology
Tumors tend to have a lot of blood supply. They take over the surrounding area and cause a lot of blood vessels to grow to feed the tumor. The bad part about this is that sometimes cells will break off the tumor and get swept up into the blood stream. From there, they will take root wherever they land, and can grow new secondary tumors. These secondary tumors are called metastases, and once you hit that stage, surgical removal is pretty much only an option for the largest masses, or those which are directly threatening an organ. Chemo and radiation are used to kill off these rogue tumor cells, and the beginnings of new tumors.
If you remove the original tumor before it metastacises, you can ‘cure’ the disease. This happens frequently with breast cancers; they remove as much breast tissue as possible. In many cases, this can be the end of the cancer. But a lot of times the cancer returns for one reason or another, at which case they remove any tumors they can, and treat the rest with chemo and radiation.
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