Type of Surgery
Information
Last updated: 02/17/2009
The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 1 million cases of cancer are diagnosed each year. Seventy-seven percent of cancers are diagnosed in men and women over the age of 55, although cancer may affect individuals of any age. Men are...
more often affected than women; during his lifetime, one in two men will be diagnosed with cancer, compared to one in three women. Cancer affects people of all races and ethnic backgrounds, although cancer type does vary somewhat depending upon these factors.
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Lymphadenectomy consists of the surgical removal of one or more groups of lymph nodes. It is almost always performed as part of the surgical management of cancer.
This is usually done because many types of cancer have a marked tendency to produce lymph node metastasis early on in their natural history. This is particularly true of melanoma, head and neck cancer, differentiated thyroid cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, gastric cancer and colorectal cancer. Famed British surgeon Sir Berkeley Moynihan once remarked that "the surgery of cancer is not the surgery of organs; it is the surgery of the lymphatic system".
The better known examples of lymphadenectomy are axillary lymph node dissection for breast cancer; radical neck dissection for head and neck cancer and thyroid cancer; D2 lymphadenectomy for gastric cancer; and total mesorectal excision for rectal cancer.
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