Optimizing Risk Vs. Reward in the Era of Ablative Radiotherapy Through Calculated Useful Trauma (CUT).

Among cancer treatment modalities, surgery has the longest and most celebrated medical history. Fossil remnants date trepanation, a procedure that entailed drilling a hole through the skull, back to the Neolithic era, and some historians have surmised this was performed for brain tumors. Even early on, physicians recognized the regenerative capacity of tissue postoperatively; by 600 B.C., an Indian surgeon name Sushruta used transplanted skin tissue to aid in recovery after surgery. 1 Singh V Sushruta: The father of surgery. Natl J Maxillofac Surg. 2017; 8: 1-3 Crossref Google Scholar As the surgical field continued to evolve, the balance between wounding and healing became fine-tuned. In surgery, patients consent to traumatic bodily injury, wherein tissue is cut, exposed, explored, and removed, with the implicit understanding that these iatrogenic injuries will eventually heal. Surgery takes advantage of the human body's amazing innate ability to heal.