Recently, when consulting a patient with stage IIIb cervical cancer in the gynecology department, the patient, who was told by the physician that there were no indications for surgery, was in tears all day long, thinking that her disease was incurable and that she would not be able to live much longer. This kind of feeling of the patient and her family is understandable, but this kind of request is sometimes wrong. Surgery is one of the oldest, most effective and most commonly used clinical methods for the treatment of malignant tumors, and its therapeutic effects have been clinically proven and deeply rooted in people’s minds. In their conception, the “best” treatment for malignant tumors is surgery, which can remove the tumor “completely”, otherwise the cancer cannot be cured. Therefore, once cancer is diagnosed, patients and their family members ask for radical surgery, and even when doctors tell them that radical surgery cannot be done, the patient’s family members also put forward the idea of “treating the dead horse as if it is alive”, and resolutely ask for the removal of the cancer. Sometimes, individual surgeons do not have a thorough understanding of the standard of treatment of tumors, and this has contributed to the problem. For the treatment of some cancers, surgery is the first choice, but whether a patient can undergo radical surgery depends on his/her age, general physical condition, function of major organs, infiltration and adhesion around the tumor and systemic metastasis. Cancer patients with the following conditions cannot undergo radical surgery: 1. Those who have malignant disease, severe anemia, dehydration and serious disturbance of nutritional metabolism, which can not be corrected or improved in a short period of time. 2. Those who have severe cardiac, hepatic, and respiratory disorders. Those who have serious heart, liver, kidney and lung diseases, or high fever, serious infectious diseases, etc. and cannot tolerate the surgery. 3. Those whose tumors have extensive metastasis or serious adhesion with neighboring organs. Cancer in areas where surgical resection is difficult, such as nasopharyngeal cancer, upper esophagus cancer, tongue root cancer, etc. Cancers that are prone to metastasis at a very early stage, such as small cell carcinoma of lung, mostly do not advocate surgical treatment. Patients can not do radical surgery is not equal to giving up the treatment. For some advanced cancers, although patients can not be treated with radical surgery at the time of consultation, but after other treatments, it is possible to make the condition relieved and get better curative effect by applying radical surgery again, e.g., it is not suitable to do “anal preservation” for low rectal cancer at the time of consultation, but after induction chemotherapy and preoperative surgery, it is not suitable to do “anal preservation” for rectal cancer. However, after induction chemotherapy and preoperative radiotherapy, the tumor can be downstaged, which creates conditions for “anal preservation surgery” and improves the quality of life of patients. It has been reported in the literature that the concentration of a substance called “cytokinin” in the blood increases several times after the patient undergoes surgery. This substance is secreted at an accelerated rate when cells are damaged and promotes cell division to restore damaged tissue. If too much of it is secreted, it may suppress the immune response and cause the cancer to metastasize. These findings provide strong evidence that cancer surgery is not entirely beneficial and can lower the patient’s immune function and promote the spread and metastasis of cancer. Therefore, some experts suggest that cancer surgery should be performed with caution, especially for advanced cancer, which should not be forced to undergo radical surgery. In clinical practice, we sometimes come across this kind of situation, in which the family members feel that if they do not have surgery for such a big disease, it is as if they are not actively treating the disease, and they cannot explain it to their friends and relatives, so even if the doctor repeatedly tells them that it is likely to be a “switching operation”, they still sign the operation without any hesitation. After surgery, the tumor was found to be severely adherent or widely metastasized and could not be removed, so it had to be stitched up “as is”, and the result was not just “a wasted knife”. Surgical trauma makes the already weak patients “more weak”, and soon leave the earth, “people and money”, too late to regret. This is obviously a kind of not everyone would not like to see the end. At present, all kinds of medical examination equipments and technologies are developing constantly, any kind of tumor should be treated strictly according to the requirements of evidence-based medicine before starting the treatment, and when the condition is completely clarified, according to the standard of tumor treatment, the doctor doesn’t recommend to do the surgery, so try to avoid it! Surgery to remove the tumor is easy to achieve, but will the tumor cells really be “completely” eliminated? The answer is mostly negative. Therefore, the tumor still needs to be treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy after surgery. Of course, surgery is not the only way to achieve the goal of tumor treatment, for example, the preferred treatment for nasopharyngeal cancer is radiotherapy-based comprehensive treatment. Like lymphoma, cervical cancer, small cell lung cancer, etc., they can be cured by radiotherapy and chemotherapy, so why do they need to go into the operating room for incision? With the in-depth study of oncology, more and more experts have realized that simple surgery cannot cure all tumors. In recent years, with the rapid development of tumor treatment technology and equipment, clinical oncology has entered the era of comprehensive treatment, and the era of surgery as a single treatment method for tumors has passed. Therefore, when the disease is clearly diagnosed, you must communicate with your competent doctor to find the most suitable treatment measures for the patient, and don’t lose your confidence in the treatment as soon as you hear that you can’t have surgery or don’t need surgery, or even force the doctor to kneel down or cry. We hope that the family members can face the disease rationally and choose the treatment plan reasonably in order to achieve the best treatment effect!