Why do cancer patients recur after radical surgery?

  The general concept of radical tumor resection is to remove the primary tumor and its infiltrating tissues or metastatic regional lymph nodes as a whole, and the clinicopathological report shows that no cancer infiltration is seen at both ends. It should be pointed out that radical surgery cannot cure the tumor. The so-called radical tumor surgery means that while removing the mass, the resection area is expanded and the suspicious tissues and lymph nodes around the mass are also removed, in order to achieve the purpose of “radical cure”. But it is not equal to cure the tumor, it is just a kind of misunderstanding, perhaps it is more appropriate to call it “extended tumor resection”. Huang Diyan, Department of Stomatology, General Hospital of Jinan Military Region With the deepening of modern research on tumor, people gradually realize that malignant tumor is actually a systemic disease, and the lump is only a local manifestation of tumor in a certain organ of the body, so removing the lump cannot eliminate the source of cancer and change the nature of cancer susceptibility of patients.  Some clinical data show that within three years after radical tumor surgery, more than 80% of patients have recurrence and metastasis. In some cases, the number of tumor cells in metastases is less than 10 to the sixth power, which is called “subclinical metastasis”. At this time, surgery, including radical surgery, can do nothing for such tiny metastases that are not visible to the naked eye. Once the condition permits, this kind of tiny subclinical lesions will form a starburst.  Therefore, most surgical oncology procedures are only effective tumor reduction procedures, not so-called radical surgery. According to the statistics of the World Health Organization, radical surgery of certain tumors does not significantly improve the survival rate of tumor patients in three or five years compared with local surgery, and some patients have more tissues removed and more damage to the normal physiological tissues of the human body, resulting in a significant decrease in the quality of life after surgery. The treatment of breast cancer, for example, is no longer advocated.  More importantly, after radical surgery, in order to reduce recurrence and metastasis in the early and middle stages, it is necessary to adopt a combination of Chinese and Western medicine for overall conditioning under the guidance of the principle of comprehensive treatment, so as to make the internal environment of the body relatively constant, promote the recovery and improvement of immune function, induce abnormal differentiation of cancer cells to normal differentiation, and make the residual cancer cells change to the right, so as to achieve the purpose of preventing recurrence and metastasis.  As Xu Da-chun, a famous medical practitioner in Qing Dynasty, said in “The Use of Medicine is Like the Use of Soldiers”: “If a disease is divided and treated, then the few can win over the many, so that the front and back do not save each other, and its potential declines since …… If the body of deficient evil, the attack cannot be too much, the medicine of peace, and the medicine of dire medicine to supplement the …. …However, the selection of materials must be appropriate, the equipment must be good, grasp its not offend, the layout of the method of treatment …… is complete.”