For many types of cancer, complete surgical removal of the primary tumour is the only treatment that is ever capable of producing a complete and permanent cure. Surgery cures more cancers than does any other form of treatment. Surgery is also recommended to cancer patients for other reasons: to make a diagnosis, to relieve or prevent symptoms and to reconstruct parts of the body. We will look at each of these in turn later in this chapter.
There is one basic problem with surgical treatment which does not apply with other types of treatment. Surgery is done while you are unconscious and therefore incapable of making any decisions.
If something unexpected is found during an operation on you, decisions about the best immediate course of action will be taken out of your hands. They will be made on your behalf by the surgeon. Most surgeons take it for granted that they should be making all the decisions, so they have no strong reasons for trying to prevent this situation from arising. There is only one way to make sure that you make the decisions about what operation will be done. You must make sure that you know, as completely and accurately as possible, before your operation what will be found when you are opened up, and what can be done to deal with this situation. The more careful and thorough your pre-operative assessment is, the greater the possibility of the exact opertion lat you agree to being performed.
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