malki13
![]()
Posts:92
why are new areas of disease typically found after surgery and then very fast? Does that mean that if you didn't have surgery these new areas would not be there? Is the connection between the surgery and the cancer or the awareness of the cancer?
Forums
Reply # - July 22, 2014, 09:03 AM
Reply To: "pneumonic BAC" question
It is awareness of the cancer; not everything is visible on pre-surgery scans. Even if the surgery played some kind of role in spreading the cancer, it would not be seen very quickly after, or at the time of surgery. If cancer cells are spread via any type of invasive procedure, they would still need time to develop into visible nodules.
JimC
Forum moderator
Reply # - July 22, 2014, 12:00 PM
Reply To: "pneumonic BAC" question
Yes, it's just that surgery makes it possible to see things that aren't clearly visible on scans. "You can't find a fever if you don't take a temperature": surgery provides a more accurate assessment of the disease than can be entertained by the plausible deniability of not looking. It's like concluding that the ER causes heart attacks because many people in the ER are found to have a heart attack.
I think it's not helpful for you to be so hyper-focused on this question of "did surgery lead to the spread of the cancer?". There is just no good reason to believe that.
-Dr. West
Reply # - July 22, 2014, 01:43 PM
Reply To: "pneumonic BAC" question
Thank you very much!!