Surgery or not

My husband is on round 3 of chemo meaning third year. It is working and thing are shrinking but his lymph node in the perineal area is still there. If they could do surgery and get this out would he be finished with chemo and how risky of a surgery would this be?

[PaulMD]

Hi there.

While this is a good option to eventually control all gross disease, the problem lies with the difficulty in doing specific surgeries in this area of the gastrointestinal tract.  Lymph nodes may be firmly attached to surrounding tissues that removing them with a clean margin may not be possible.

An option that I can see is that you can assess if these lymph nodes still contain viable cancer cells or just enlarged non cancerous lymph nodes through a test called a PET scan.  If these nodes turn out negative on PET, then I believe there can be an allowable interval of a chemotherapy holiday.  I would suggest you discuss this option with his doctors.

Regards and God bless.