What are the advantages and disadvantages of radiotherapy versus surgery?

  Radiotherapy and surgery are both local treatment means, both have their own limitations and also have good complementarity. The characteristic of modern radiotherapy is that it is not afraid of blood vessels and intestines, and it is not afraid of site and volume, which is the opposite of surgery, which is not afraid of intestines and vessels, and not afraid of volume and location.  In the treatment of tumors in various parts of the body, the tolerance of each organ and tissue to radiation is one of the key factors to determine whether the tumor can be killed by radiotherapy. One of the most important features of the tolerance of tissues and organs to radiotherapy is the high tolerance of blood vessels to radiation, and the dose of killing tumors will not cause serious damage to adjacent blood vessels, while surgery is afraid of tumor invasion of blood vessels. On the contrary, the intestinal organs have lower tolerance to radiation, and surgery is more effective than radiotherapy when the tumor grows in these areas. Therefore, surgery should be the treatment of choice. Another characteristic of radiotherapy is that it is pervasive and can reach any part of the body. Therefore, modern radiotherapy can treat tumors in any part of the body that cannot be treated by surgery. However, radiation therapy is difficult to increase the irradiation dose to the tumor when the tumor volume is too large, due to the increase of the irradiation area and the surrounding normal tissue irradiated volume, which makes the treatment effect decrease. Therefore, when the tumor is too large, it is more effective to choose surgical resection in the surgically resectable area.