For cervical cancer patients, open surgery may actually be safer than minimally invasive operations, a new study suggests.
In the earliest stages of cervical cancer, a hysterectomy – a surgery to remove the entire female reproductive system, including the uterus, cervix and other tissues – is the standard treatment for the disease.
Physicians have widely adopted laproscopic hysterectomies, which allow them to cut away the diseased tissue through a small incision, meaning quicker recovery times and less pain and scarring.
The operation has even been preferable to many physicians, but a new pair of studies from Massachusetts General Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center found that minimally invasive surgeries raised the risk of death 65 percent.
The finding came as a shock to the researchers, who have no idea why laproscopic surgeries would lead to higher death risks later.
In the US, cervical cancer is relatively rare, striking 13,240 women a year.
But it is a dangerous one: 4,170 women die of the disease a year.
Doctors and diagnostic tools – mainly, pap smears given to women during regular gynecological check-ups – have drastically improved, helping us catch cells that would become cancerous before they do.
For women with pre-cancerous pap smears or early stages of the disease, a ‘radical’ hysterectomy to remove the diseased tissue and a fairly wide margin around it to ensure that all of the dangerous cells are gone.
Laproscopy, a technique that uses a tiny camera and light through which doctors see the surgical site inside the body and operate with tiny tools, was first performed in 1910.
In the 1990s, a New York doctor developed a method of performing hysterectomies laproscopically.
Hysterectomies are considered major surgery, though less than one percent of patients die in the procedure.
Since then, it has become the go-to strategy for gynecologists and surgeons.
Now, the majority of hysterectomies – whether performed to treat