heroic surgery

An aggressive procedure—e.g., radical mastectomy for cancer—in which wide resection margins are obtained, as the tumour has spread beyond a resectable size. Heroic surgery is performed to alleviate pain or improve the quality of life in terminally ill patients, but is not generally regarded as curative

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heroic surgery

Surgical oncology An aggressive procedure–eg, radical mastectomy for malignancy, in which wide resection margins are obtained, as the tumor has spread beyond a resectable size; HS is performed to alleviate pain or improve the quality of life in terminally ill Pts. See All-American operation, Commando operation, Forequarter amputation. Cf Heroic therapy.

McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.