Endocrine Surgery

Endocrine oncologic surgery deals with cancers impacting hormone-producing glands. It involves diagnosing, treating, and managing cancers of glands like the thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal, and pancreas. Endocrine oncologic surgeons collaborate with various specialists to offer comprehensive care for endocrine-related cancers. 
Endocrine oncology is led by Dr. Vivek Aggarwal, the pioneering and first qualified endocrine surgeon in Delhi NCR, who has the most extensive experience in this field.

Significance of Endocrine Oncologic Surgery:

Cancers affecting endocrine glands often disrupt hormones that regulate metabolism and health. Performing surgery treats these tumors by:

•  Managing Tumor Growth: Removing endocrine cancers fully or partly reduces tumor size prevents further spreading and controls ongoing growth.
•  Balancing Hormone Levels: Surgery on hormone-producing tumors helps manage excessive secretions causing endocrine disorders. It treats deficiencies from disrupted gland function.
•  Enhancing Life Quality: Resecting cancerous endocrine glands and tumors alleviates symptoms, resulting in well-being, and improves patients' quality of life experience.

Types of Endocrine Oncologic Surgeries:

Thyroid Cancer Surgery:

• Thyroidectomy: Thyroidectomy means removing all or part of the thyroid gland. It treats papillary carcinoma, follicular cancer, medullary thyroid, and anaplastic thyroid cancers.
• Lymph Node Dissection: If thyroid cancer spreads to lymph nodes, a neck dissection surgery may be done to take out affected lymph nodes.

Parathyroid Cancer Surgery:

• Parathyroidectomy: Parathyroidectomy involves surgically removing parathyroid tumors, such as adenomas and carcinomas. This controls high parathyroid hormone levels and prevents problems like high blood calcium.

Adrenal Cancer Surgery:

•  Adrenalectomy: Adrenalectomy removes adrenal tumors, including adenomas and adrenocortical carcinomas. It tre­ats hormone-secreting tumors (e.g. aldosterone, cortisol) and prevents cancer spread.

Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor (NET) Surgery:

• Pancreaticoduodenectomy (Whipple Procedure): Pancreaticoduodenectomy (Whipple­ Procedure) removes pancreas head tumors like insulinomas, gastrinomas, glucagonomas, and somatostatinomas.
• Distal Pancreatectomy: Distal Pancreatectomy removes the tail and body of the pancreas for tumors located there.

Benefits 

The key advantages of the surgeries are as follows:

•  Curative Intent: Early surgery results in a positive patient outlook and prevents further spread.
•  Symptom Relief: Removing tumors results in preventing too many hormones. This fixes hyperthyroidism, hyperparathyroidism, and Cushing's, pheochromocytoma issues.
•  Prevention of Complications: Removing the cancerous glands avoids issues like organ dysfunction, hormone imbalance, metastasis, and tumor compression.