Operating room technology
Operating room technology
of a negative margin The positives
Surgical resection of cancerous tissue tends to include a “safety margin” of healthy tissue as a precaution against recurrence. This is due to the possibility for small cancer cells to break away from the primary cancer site and replicate among nearby healthy tissue. But surgeons must balance the need to resect healthy tissue against the potential harm of removing too much, which means a method to differentiate tissue during resection is a necessity. Monica Karpinski speaks to Dr Anees Chagpar, professor of Oncological Surgery at Yale School of Medicine and Dr Sarah Blair, surgical oncologist and professor of Surgery at the University of California San Diego, to learn how methods to identify cancerous tissue and cut away the optimal amount of healthy tissue have developed.
F 44
ifty years ago, the standard treatment for breast cancer was to remove the entire breast, plus the chest wall muscles underneath it – and the lymph nodes under the arm. This procedure, called a radical mastectomy, is still carried out today in extreme circumstances; but thanks to advances in the field over the past few decades, surgeons are able to better preserve the
natural look of the body as they remove cancerous tissue safely. To do so, a surgeon must grapple with a key question: how much tissue around the cancer should I take out?
Enough of the surrounding tissue, which is known as the surgical margin, must be taken out to prevent cancer cells from breaking away and spreading – but take out more than necessary and it could affect the
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