Lung cancers that grow into the chest wall and rare primary tumors of the chest wall need to be removed or resected. With modern prosthetics and meticulous surgical techniques, chest wall tumors can be removed from patients with good functional and cosmetic outcomes. Some of the chest wall surgery therapies can be performed in part using minimally invasive techniques such as video-assisted thoracic surgery or VATS.
In regards to chest wall cancer surgery, our surgeons and care providers work as a team in multidisciplinary collaboration as a part of the National Cancer Institute Designated UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, which employs a multidisciplinary approach, providing expert opinions from thoracic surgery, pulmonology, radiation oncology, diagnostic radiology, and medical oncology to best fight our patients’ cancers. Our patients may be eligible for UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center clinical trials that offer cutting edge and state of the art therapies. Many of these clinical trials offer “personalized medicine” where molecular defects found in the tumors undergo specific “targeted therapy”.
Our surgeons, along with researchers from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center collaborate with JAX West, A UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center research partner. Through this innovative and ground breaking partnership, tumors are engrafted into specialized mice, creating a “co-clinical” approach that allows our scientists to safely test novel and potentially life-saving new cancer drugs, at no risk to patients.
