Surgery Combined with Targeted Therapy in Advanced Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

It is helpless that surgery is used to treat patients with advanced GIST in order to prolong their survival. In addition, surgery is the only option when patients with advanced tumors experience complications, such as bleeding, perforation, and obstruction. However, the results of surgery alone for this group of patients with GIST are not satisfactory. The identification of a series of tyrosine kinase receptor inhibitors has greatly prolonged the survival time for patients with advanced GIST. In the era of targeted therapy, surgery has become the second-line treatment for advanced GIST, but still plays a very important role, especially when the drug treatments provided by oncology physicians are ineffective. Determining when surgical intervention should be provided in the process of targeted drug therapy is still controversial and needs further research.