Surgery
A surgical oncologist is a doctor who specializes in treating cancer using surgery. For lung cancer, a thoracic surgeon is specially trained to perform lung cancer surgery. The goal of surgery is the complete removal of the lung tumor and the nearby lymph nodes in the chest. The tumor must be removed with a surrounding border of normal lung tissue (called the margin). A “negative margin” means that when the pathologist examines the lung, or piece of lung that has been removed by the surgeon, no cancer was found in the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor
The following types of surgery may be used for lung cancer: