Surgical Cancer Care 

Leading-edge surgical oncology

Surgery can function as part of your cancer treatment plan or help your healthcare provider diagnose your condition. If you need cancer diagnosis or treatment and you live in East Central Indiana or West Central Ohio, oncologists at Reid Cancer Center work closely with Reid's general and plastic surgeons to offer advanced surgical care close to home.  

Cancer surgery at Reid

Our goal is to treat cancer as effectively as possible while minimizing damage to surrounding tissue.

Diagnosing cancer with surgery

To confirm a cancer diagnosis, your provider might order a surgical biopsy, where they’ll take a sample of potentially cancerous tissue and send it to the lab for testing. In the lab, a specially trained doctor called a pathologist uses a microscope to look at the tissue for any signs of cancer.  

The type and location of the suspected cancer will determine what kind of biopsy you might need.  

During a needle biopsy, your provider numbs your skin and then uses a needle to remove several samples from the suspicious area. A needle biopsy is usually performed in the provider’s office. Needle biopsies are often used to help diagnose cancers of the:

• Breast
• Liver
• Muscles
• Prostate
• Testicles
• Thyroid

Your provider might also choose to do a surgery called an open biopsy. While you’re asleep in the operating room, your provider removes the entire tumor (excisional biopsy) or a small part of a large tumor (incisional biopsy). Open biopsies might be used to diagnose cancers in the:

• Abdomen
• Bones
• Bone marrow
• Lung
• Lymph nodes
• Nerves

In other biopsies, a surgeon could remove the entire organ. Most of the time, biopsies are the only way to confirm whether a tumor is cancerous.  

Open biopsies and needle biopsies are both safe, but open biopsies have more potential for risk, including bleeding, infection, and accidental injury to nearby tissue.  

You’ll most likely be able to go home the same day after a biopsy.

Surgery for cancer treatment

Your oncologist or provider might recommend surgery to treat many types of cancer. Depending on your diagnosis, surgery could be the only treatment you need, or you might have surgery along with other treatments, such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy.  

Surgery can be used to:  

• Ease symptoms: Surgery might relieve pain or pressure caused by a tumor.
• Place treatment tools: These short surgical procedures for port or central line placement allow your team to deliver cancer medications, such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy, as well as medications to treat side effects.  
• Reduce the size of a tumor: Making a tumor smaller with surgery makes it easier to target with other treatments.

Types of cancer surgeries

Our surgeons treat cancer using open and minimally invasive procedures.

With traditional open surgery, your surgeon makes incisions, or cuts, into the skin to get a full view of the tumor and organs involved. Open surgical incisions are usually large. To lower the risk of cancer being left behind or coming back, your surgeon might remove some healthy tissue along with your tumor.

Minimally invasive surgery allows the surgeon to make smaller, more precise cuts. Using smaller cuts often reduces recovery time and leads to less pain after surgery.

At Reid, you have two options for minimally invasive cancer surgery:

• Laparoscopic surgery: These procedures involve a thin, flexible tool with a light and camera on the end (a laparoscope) inserted into your belly. The tool allows your surgeon to view the surgical area on a screen while operating through a small incision.
• Robotic-assisted da Vinci surgery: The da Vinci Surgical System features tiny instruments that move like a human hand, allowing surgeons to operate through one or a few small, precise cuts. Our surgeons use da Vinci surgery to treat urological, gynecologic, kidney, and lung cancers.

Whenever possible, Reid's surgeons use minimally invasive techniques to treat cancer, aiming to preserve healthy tissue and promote quicker recovery compared to open surgeries. This approach is particularly beneficial for cancers like skin and breast cancer, which can have significant cosmetic implications.

Appearance-preserving surgeries

Our surgeons offer Mohs micrographic surgery, which involves removing skin cancer layer by layer, preserving healthy skin as much as possible. For basal and squamous cell carcinomas, they can use cryotherapy, in which liquid nitrogen is used to freeze and destroy skin tumors while sparing healthy skin.

For people with breast cancer, our general surgeons remove tumors while working to preserve as much natural breast tissue as they can. All our surgeons are members of The American Society of Breast Surgeons, and they work with our plastic and reconstructive surgeons for women who want breast reconstruction surgery after treatment