Expecting a surgeon NOT to operate is like hoping the mechanic will find nothing wrong with your car.
Not gonna happen.
Surgeons and mechanics have plenty in common, starting with one basic fact: Neither get paid when there’s no job to do.
Need proof? Just take a look at the latest research on breast cancer surgeons.
Even when there’s supposedly no job to do — even when mainstream guidelines urge AGAINST surgery — they’re still going ahead and operating anyway.
The study finds that they’re ripping out lymph nodes when there’s no medical reason for it — and when it’s more likely to HURT, not HELP, their patients.
They’re even ADMITTING to it.
The new study looks at the removal of sentinel nodes and axillary nodes.
In the past, surgeons would just rip them all out. Better safe than sorry, right?
Wrong.
A simple lumpectomy usually removes the sentinel nodes closest to the tumor and the ones most like to have cancer. The remaining axillary nodes – further away – almost never have cancer in early-stage disease.
As a result, more recent guidelines say that docs should lay off the axillary nodes.
But they’re not. Guidelines schmidelines – what’s a rule when there’s money to be made?
The new study finds that half of all breast cancer surgeons still remove axillary nodes in women with tumors in one or two sentinel lymph nodes, while nearly two-thirds say they’d do the same for women with cancer in two sentinel nodes.
One expert told the Reuters news agency that it might just be that surgeons are “skeptical” of the guidelines since they’re relatively new.
I know it might sound like the better-safe-than-sorry approach is best — remove as much as possible so you have less to worry about.
In reality, you might not be safe at all. You could end up sorry instead, as removing lymph nodes can lead to permanent problems like pain and numbness in the arms.
In other words, you want to leave them alone when you can – and if you have early-stage cancer, you almost always can.
The researchers behind the new study are urging women facing surgery to get a second opinion. I’d add that in some cases, you might even want a third one.
And whatever you choose, be sure to bring in a holistic medical doctor who can work with you on natural therapies to limit the toxic side effects of mainstream cancer treatments.