Surgical Oncology still has a crucial role in cancer care. Often surgical approaches are offering the most definitive approach for cure of an early cancer. The Cancer Center provides the on-site services of specialized cancer surgeons. These surgeons, with more than two additional years of oncology training, bring some of the latest technology and skills in cancer surgery for diagnosis and treatment to Hartford. Our surgeons provide expert care in malignant melanoma, breast cancer, lung cancer, sarcomas, gastro-intestinal and urologic cancers as well as head and neck malignancies.

Among the technical advances in surgery available in the Cancer Center are sentinel node mapping for melanoma and breast cancer which allows surgeons to pinpoint the location of cancers so that more extensive surgery can often be avoided. There is highly specialized expertise available in minimally invasive surgery. Minimally invasive surgery is usually carried out with a small fiber-optic scope, that is inserted through a small incision and permits the surgeon not only to see inside of a body cavity, but under directvisualization to remove tumors or even whole organs. The procedures include minimally invasive thyroidectomy, cholecystectomy, splenectomy and hysterectomy, to name a few. Minimally invasive surgery is much better tolerated by the patient and can often be done in the outpatient setting or with much reduced inpatient hospitalization times. A novel recently introduced curative technique is radio frequency ablation, whereby the surgeon introduces a probe directly to the tumor which is then treated with high frequency microwaves. The microwaves destroy the tumor with minimal side effects on the normal tissue. These therapies permit the curative treatment of patients who are either elderly or have other co-morbid diseases and would not have withstood the trauma of regular, invasive surgery.

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