Cancer Surgery
Open Access

Leukemia cells spread widely throughout the bone marrow and other organs, so surgery cannot be used to cure this type of cancer. The reasons for this are two-fold: (1) leukemia cells usually are widespread throughout the body at the time of diagnosis, so they cannot be "cut out" like other forms of cancer; and (2) surgery is not needed for diagnosis, since bone marrow aspiration usually is adequate to confirm the disease.

leukemia cells spread throughout the bone marrow and to many other organs through the blood, it’s not possible to cure this type of cancer by surgery. Aside from a possible lymph node biopsy, surgery rarely has any role even in the diagnosis, since a bone marrow aspirate and biopsy can usually diagnose leukemia.

Leukemia Surgery