SURGERY AIMED AT PREVENTING OR RELIEVING SYMPTOMS – INTRODUCTION
Patients with extensive cancer sometimes have symptoms which can be overcome temporarily by an operation. For example, pain and inability to walk due to a fracture through a cancer deposit in the thigh bone can be corrected by strengthening the bone with a steel pin and plate. Weakness and numbness of the legs due to a cancer deposit pressing on the spinal cord may be reversed by relieving the pressure surgically. Pain and vomiting due to blockage of the bowel can be treated by surgically bypassing the blockage, usually by creating a colostomy.
Before agreeing to this sort of surgery, you need to be very clear about what the proposed operation can and cannot achieve. Firstly, these operations cannot and do not have any effect on the cancer itself. Very little of the cancer is actually removed. If you have extensive cancer before one of these operations, you will still have extensive cancer after it.
*249/40/1*
