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Surgery

Surgery plays little, if any, role in the management of small-cell lung cancer because almost all cancers have spread by the time they are discovered.

The exceptions are the relatively small number of persons (<5%) whose cancer is discovered at a very early stage of the disease, when the cancer is confined to the lung without any spread to the lymph nodes.

Patients who are diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer at a very early stage of the disease may undergo surgical removal of the lung tumor as the initial diagnostic procedure. However, surgery alone is not considered curative, so chemotherapy is also administered.