Surgery is the most common and oldest treatment for cancer. It is mainly used to diagnose and treat the extent of cancer. During surgery treatment, cancer and some tissues adjacent to cancer are removed.

Surgery can be done for several reasons:

Diagnosis - In diagnosing cancer a biopsy can be performed. A sample of tissue is removed and the cells contained in the sample are sent to a pathology laboratory to find out whether cancer is present or not. These cells are studied under microscope and thus the diagnosis of cancer is confirmed.

Treatment - Many tumors can be removed by surgery. During surgery along with the tumor cells the normal cells may get removed.

Reconstruction - Surgery can be used for the reconstruction of the organ. It can be used to restore the part of the body or the appearance of the organ of the body.

Debulking surgery - This type of cancer treatment is done when it is not possible to remove all the cancer tumor cells from the organ because doing that may cause harmful effects. To removes all the cancerous cells some cells are removed by surgery and rest of the treatment is done by using radiotherapy or chemotherapy.

Palliative surgery - This type of surgery treatment is used for advanced diseases when it is not possible to remove all the cancer cells to cure cancer completely. Palliative surgery may be used to get relief from the pain and reduce the tumor effects when it is not possible to control cancer cells.