Surgical Oncology

Surgical oncology is a cancer care field that focuses on using surgery to diagnose, stage and treat cancer. Surgical oncologists may also perform palliative surgeries to help control pain, increase a patient’s comfort level and manage cancer-related symptoms and side effects. At a broad level, one can define the roles and responsibilities of a surgical oncologist as follows: (I) an excellent surgeon who can safely manage cancer patients through complex operations (II) knows how to integrate surgical treatment as part of a multidisciplinary team, including the type and timing of surgery after pre-operative systemic therapies and/or radiation therapies; the uniqueness of this specialty is that the doctor function as both a surgeon and an oncologist in the management of the patient with cancer.