Surgery may be the only form of treatment you have, but it is often accompanied by radiotherapy, drug therapy, such as cytotoxic drugs, or both. Combination therapy is used, because cancer cells can become detached from the tumour and pass elsewhere in the body, sometimes even at a very early stage, which surgery is unable to prevent. Supplementary, or adjuvant, treatment is used to destroy detached cancer cells.

Sometimes surgery does not aim to remove the entire tumour. If the tumour mass is sizeable, surgery may be used to reduce the size of the tumour so that it can be eradicated by chemotherapy of radiotherapy. Metastases from the primary tumour can also be removed surgically.

Surgery can be used to treat a wide range of conditions across different parts of the body. Here are some of the most common conditions that may require surgery: