Surgical Oncology

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Renaissance Man

Saving the World
10+ Year Member
Joined
Jan 23, 2010
Messages
1,122
Reaction score
174
I just have a question about the logistics of this fellowship, and I couldn't find the answer searching other threads. Do surgical oncologists only handle cancer that would be in the area covered by a general surgeon? That is if I was a surgical oncologist, I would not deal with brain or lung cancer, right?

Also, do general surgeons remove tumors or just surgical oncologist?

Thanks everyone, I know I am only pre-med, I am just interested in how things work at the surgical level :xf:

Members don't see this ad.
 
I just have a question about the logistics of this fellowship, and I couldn't find the answer searching other threads. Do surgical oncologists only handle cancer that would be in the area covered by a general surgeon? That is if I was a surgical oncologist, I would not deal with brain or lung cancer, right?

Also, do general surgeons remove tumors or just surgical oncologist?

Thanks everyone, I know I am only pre-med, I am just interested in how things work at the surgical level :xf:

I have interest in surg onc, but clearly no expert...

Surgical Oncology is an interesting field. Essentially any surgery they do has overlap with other fields, and there is no "sugical oncology" board (although, in talking to people on the board of the Society of Surgical Oncology, it is likely to become a board certified specialty very soon). Many of the cases they do used to be and to an extent still are the realm of general surgery. The Whipple Procedure (the glory surgery of surg onc for pancreatic cancer) is still performed by general surgeons with no surg onc training at many community and even academic centers. Transplant and Hepatobiliary surgeons also will do Whipples very frequently. Thyroid cancer is common surg onc case, but it is also done by Head and Neck Surgeons (either via ENT or via General surgery). Breast Cancer can be done by Surg Onc, and there is an entire fellowship dedicated just to breast cancer. Colon cancer is surg onc and colorectal surgeon. Melanoma is surg onc and plastics (and even some dermatology)

Surgical Oncologists will typically not do lung (thoracic), bone (ortho), or brain cancer(neurosurg), and the oropharnyx is also pretty much not done by Surg Oncs (ENT). They will do most anything else (esophagus is primarily done by Thoracic Surgeons, but there are Surg Oncs that do them).

The theory behind doing advanced surg onc training and in focusing your practice on oncology is for these advanced cases (the whipple for example), one of the best predictors of outcome is the volume of the surgeon/hospital per year.. ie, if I get a whipple, I want my surgeon to be doing atleast 20 of them a year... You also focus your fellowship training on outpatient workup and management that you don't get from your residency training to the extent needed to deal with cancer... But you go all over the body, so how much time do you really focus on one area? Most surg oncs end up specializing in one area of the body (the Surg onc who is my advisor does primarily Foregut procedures, but will still do just about anything in the abdomen, but I have never seen him do breast, thyroid, or melanoma). Many old school attendings don't like or believe in the need for Surg Onc, but I think it is great
 
Surgical oncology is a very small field. The vast majority of surgical cancer treatments are performed by non-surgical oncologists (gen surgeons, thoracic surgeons...)
 
Top