It looks like there is a trend in breast cancer and now lung cancer of not removing the lymph nodes, so when should lymph nodes be removed, or should they be removed? What doctors are trying to do a lot of the time with cancer, is make an assessment of how extensive the cancer is, how far it has spread, and then based on that, they try to pick the treatments that are the most realistic. Surgeons would often take out the lymph nodes to determine if the cancer has spread. Doctors have now decided that this is unnecessary if the tumors are small, especially in the lungs.
