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Ductal carcinoma. Can surgery cause cancer to spread?

Breast Cancer | Last Active: 1 day ago | Replies (43)
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@catherineedna

When I had my first breast cancer 30 years ago my breast cancer surgeon, a woman, was very honest and never tried to hide information or treat me like I was too uninformed to understand anything. Since cancer can travel through blood vessels, lymph nodes etc. and you are cutting all of those in surgery, of course cancer cells get out. We just have to hope that our bodies have the strength to fight these now that the big clump of them has been removed. Here is an article which may help
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5380551/
I don’t think you can cover all the bases, all the time. Do what you can or feel comfortable with and keep positive that the body will do the rest. Running after every single test would keep me in a constant state of stress, but that's just me.

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Replies to "When I had my first breast cancer 30 years ago my breast cancer surgeon, a woman,..."
windyshores | @windyshores | 5 days ago

I had focal lymphovascular invasion but the margins were sufficient for me to feel that everything had been cut out. I am ten years out. The article liked above does say that "Surgery is a crucial intervention and provides a chance of cure for patients with cancer." but suggests some possible approaches after surgery to prevent risk of cancer cell growth. I am wondering why they did not mention hormonal meds, which I have read address residual cells.

I was told that we have cancer cells circulating all the time. The significance of lymphovascular invasion was not the presence of cancer cells per se, but the fact that they were "wanted to travel" and were able to implant. Apparently some cells can and some can't.

I would never decline surgery based on this article and that is not the authors' intent.

I sat across from a women while we both had some IV treatments at an integrative medicine clinic. She had not had a biopsy because she had heard it causes cancer to spread. We always went same time, same day. Pretty soon she was no longer there.

I would discuss this article with an oncologist. It was originally 2015 I think. I am puzzled by the lack of mention of aromatase inhibitors or tamoxifen. If anyone is thinking about avoiding surgery, please talk to your doctor.

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