What part can surgery take in endometrial cancer treatment? Expert Dr. Ebony Hoskins shares her perspective about the role of surgery in treatment and explains situations when surgery may be delayed.
Dr. Ebony Hoskins is a board-certified gynecologic oncologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center and assistant professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at Georgetown University Medical Center.
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Transcript
Mikki:
Let’s talk about surgical options within endometrial cancers. What is the role of surgery in treatment of endometrial cancer?
Dr. Ebony Hoskins:
Well, I always say that our number one mode of treatment is surgery, meaning that’s the first thing that we want to do is actually remove the cancer. So, surgery is like the number one role and one it helps diagnose, it helps stage, and it helps with treatment. And so surgery, again, it’s number one. In terms of like my activation tip for a patient should ask is, what is the role of surgery, and what are the modes of surgery? Meaning, now we have minimally invasive surgery, we have sometimes the standard exploratory laparotomy surgery, so there are other options that were totally not available even 10 or 15 years ago that we have now for patients who are diagnosed with endometrial cancer.
Mikki:
Is there a time that surgery is not recommended or that they don’t ask or require that?
Dr. Ebony Hoskins:
Any patient that I have that has endometrial cancer, I’m going to figure out how I can get them to surgery. There are very infrequent times where a patient may have had, say, a pulmonary embolism or other medical complications before we can get to surgery. And at that time, we may have to delay a bit, and it all kind of depends on the scenario, but ultimately we always need to get to surgery, because that’s our number one kind of mode of a treatment, diagnosis, and staging.