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Previous heart surgery & risks of surgery to remove lung net

Posted by stephanieann @stephanieann, Mar 9 4:55am

I had a triple bypass 6 years ago and at that time they discovered lung nodule. It has been followed with CT scans & slowly grew from 8 mm to now 19 mm over past 6 years. I am 76, had biopsy and it is now dotatate positive so lobectomy is recommended. I am at higher risk of lobectomy complications due to previous open heart surgery, I get short of breath sometimes and fatigued and oncologist & cardiologist unsure what is causing these symptoms. I still wonder if it is worth it to go thru with the surgery.Doctors say lobectomy is standard to remove a typical carcinoid. Will my quality of life get worse after the lobectomy? Has anyone had lobectomy and also had open heart surgery? This is scary

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Turkey, Volunteer Mentor | @tomrennie | Mar 16 8:37am
In reply to @stephanieann "@tomrennie My lobectomy surgery to remove the dotatate + typical lung net just got delayed. About..." + (show)
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@tomrennie My lobectomy surgery to remove the dotatate + typical lung net just got delayed. About a week before surgery I got a UTI, , lots of swelling of ankles, large unexplained weight gain. I understand it is not good to undergo major surgery if one already has an infection so I am glad my cardiologist recommended it be delayed. Symptoms went away after a few days. Doctors still trying to figure out what caused these symptoms. Lung net medical oncologist said it was not likely that NET caused them, I sitll need to have a CT heart angio scan with contrast to determine if there are any further issues that might make surgery risky. But now even that might be delayed because kidney values /labs are abnormal. Dye/Contrast can impact kidneys negatively. I am waiting to hear what doctors have to say about proceeding with the scan. My question: if a lung net has been slowly growing over the past 5 years does that generally mean that it will continue to slowly grow? Also when I asked my lung net specialist about microwave ablation as an alternative he just recommended surgery again. Have people had success with microwave ablation in removing or shrinking net tumors? Having a lobectomy might impact my quality of life due to heart issues and I am struggling between the "curative" surgery vs maybe an alternative that is less invasive . When I had the triple bypass and then serious complications (sepsis, puncture of my silicone implant from breast cancer and poor sternotomy healing) it makes me very wary of another major surgery. How do people weigh the risk/benefits in dealing with the treatments for NET's?

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@stephanieann Though I have not had any surgeries for NETs, I have had a fair amount for other issues. It ultimately becomes a personal decision based upon your objectives. There are pros and cons to any treatment. Ultimately, what are your goals from treatment? Are those goals possible? What treatment gives you the best opportunity to achieve those goals? Are you willing to work through the challenges of that treatment? You are on a good path to gather all of the information possible to make an informed decision. There are no guarantees with any treatment. What other information do you want to gather to make a decision that you are comfortable with?

Here is a link to a previous discussion on lung carcinoids. Did you find anything interesting in the discussion?
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/lung-nodule-could-be-slow-growing-carcinoid/

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