Clear Surgery Margins will Improve Survival Odds.

Research from the Georgia Cancer Centre in Augusta University have shown that where clear margins have been obtained in breast cancer surgery and the tumor is fully removed, the immune system turns its attention to ridding the body of circulating cancer cells and those in lymph nodes and other organs.

According to Dr Hasan Korkaya, a tumour biologist involved in the study, where clear margins are not obtained and a little of the tumor remains, somehow the immune system starts to support the tumour which then grows back even faster.

Where the tumor was removed completely, the immune response turns its full attention to cells in other organs like the lungs; and the researchers were convinced the cells were wiped out and did not merely become dormant.

Dr Korkaya was concerned that there had been past inconsistencies over results and undertook other various tests. In both cases the cancer cells spread around the body in just a few weeks, but in the case of aggressive cancers, cancer cells in distant locations were more likely.

With the more moderate cancers, complete removal of the primary tumor allowed the immune T-calls to attack and neutralise all of the cancer cells that had spread. These had not merely become dormant as, by removing the immune T-cells, the cancers then grew again. In fact, after the tests utilising 100,000 new cancer cells, these were neutralised by the immune system too.

Source: ICON Magazine of Integrative Cancer and Oncology