Does surgical stress cause tumor metastasis

The purpose of this study was to test the validity of our working hypothesis that the stress of radical surgery may affect the prognosis of a cancer patient by precipitating hematogenous tumor metastasis, and that enhancement of this type of tumor metastasis is mediated by an increase of glucocorticoid activity that is induced in a cancer patient by surgical stress. Practically, we looked for the presence of glucocorticosteroid excess in cervical cancer patients in the course of radical surgery, and also tested the possible impact of glucocorticoid excess on the development of tumor metastasis in mice with i. v. inoculated Ehrlich ascites clone 1 tumor cells