Can chemotherapy shrink a tumor helping a person to avoid surgery?

Question

I have a friend with breast cancer and her tumor has shrunk from 8cm to 2cm while being on chemo.

Answer 1

Absolutely. One of the reasons for chemotherapy is to reduce inoperable tumors enough to make it operable. However, sometimes the patient has such an excellent response to chemotherapy that the tumors disappear completely.

My son had multiple large and small tumors scattered within the abdominal cavity (he has a rare sarcoma that predominately strikes boys and young adults). He had significant response from high dose chemotherapy and the tumors shrunk75% making him a candidate for a two surgeries. He continued with chemo and the spots on his lungs dissappeared as well as the cancer in the lympth nodes and chest wall.

So, it sounds like your friend is doing very well in her response to treatment. I don't know if she will be able to completely avoid surgery . . but it seems positive that she is having such a great response.

Answer 2

Sometimes the surgery is done to also remove the cells that were around the tumor, to ensure that there was no tiny cells missed. I have a large tumor myself, in the chest wall, not in the breast though. Chemotherapy helps to shrink it, as does radiation. The surgery is often done to remove any remnants of the tumor, as well as small cancer cells that may have been around the tumor. i know this because for me, they are going to remove the cells/tissues around my tumor to make sure that it is definately all gone. Although true, surgery is not always done every time. It varies i think. As well, it depends on where you are from, but i believe that plastic surgery would be done after the surgery as well, as it is for reasons for surgery, not because one simply wants surgery, Or atleast this is how it was explained to me.

Answer 3

my mother has breast cancer and took the chemo texatear which shrunk the tumor in the breast and lympnodes under the arm still had to have surgery to remove the breast but the lympnodes shrunk so small they could not find them they do the surgery to remove the cancer tissue

Answer 4

the goal of chemo is to kill off cancerous cells , which can reduce the size of tumors , usually radiation is used to shrink tumor size or surgery is done to try to eliminate the tumor. i wish your friend the best..........

Answer 5

I had small cell lung cancer and the chemo made it disappear. So far after 2 years it has not reappeared.