Surgery causes cancer to reoccur?

I was just curious if anyone has found this study to be true. thanks for replying. K

My recurrence occured during reconstruction surgery, 3 mos after they put a tissue expander in. It was in the lymph nodes in my neck above the collarbone.
Sheila

I read that during surgery, what is called a Spill, is when cells drip from the instruments and attach to a new area, this happened when my uncle had a large melenoma on his back removed, the cells attached to his lung which was near by. I was also told when I had my first treatments that a Sandwhich therapy is uses, whihc is chemo first to kills cells in the blood, radiation to kill cells in the tissue from surgery and further chemo to mop up what is left, so I had AC rads CMF, and as I have not had any further surgery I can't comment, I was told by the reconstruction surgery that although not common it could return after surgery, and he had to inform me of this info, to cover him I expect, so I guess it is a gamble.

Love & Hugs Lyn

[Rozebud]

I don't have anything to add since I have the same questions....but I'm thinking back to Shiela's post about how women who have reconstruction actually have better survival stats over the long run. Is this inconsistent? Or just a her2 issue??

http://www.her2support.org/forums/index.ph...topic=20310&hl=

Actually, this is all hearsay, but I wanted to let you know that my friend's husband, coming from parents with cancer history (his mom died of breast cancer, now his dad just diagnosed with prostate cancer), told me that he has heard over the radio that they mentioned already a few times that the neoadjuvant method became part of the current cancer treatment, only because doctors then realized that the open air could cause more bacterias and cancer to spread more during surgery.....

Looks like we now have a reason valid enough to make our own investigation appropriately on this one!

PS: I was automatically neoadjuvant, mainly due to the large size of my primary tumor.

I recently had asked my surgeron if cancer could spread due to the surgery. His response was, "if a cell attaches to the instrument the cancer could then spread".

Kristen
Come to think of it, I wanted to have surgery due to capsular contraction of my implant and the plastic surgeon was ready to schedule it, until he found out I had new nodes pop up in my neck....I asked the oncologist and she said no, not during a time when I am not NED. Guess if this is the case they must be worried about spread of disease.
Hugs
Sheila

[StephN]

I think that in most of our cases for Stage IV, this is an issue of spread to the nodes BEFORE any surgery has been done. This disease HAS ALREADY spread into our blood stream and this is why we get chemo and radiation.

I would NOT be afraid of suregery - the tumor has to come out.

One friend of mine has reocurred under her mastectomy scar and was told that that the reconstruction she had done "created a seeding ground" for new cancer cells to wake up and multiply. This really frightened her as this was NEVER mentioned in her consults with reconstruction surgeon. (They took an ab and her belly button is the middle of her recon site.)