What information? Apparently the doctor told them he could do it. If he really believed in himself, then he told the patient everything she needed to know. Remember, the other option is "go die". So assigning a percentage chance on the successful outcome of a surgery is utterly meaningless when the alternative is a 100% "go die".
respectfully, this isn't the way to conceptualize any medical therapy. it's never "this will save you" or "go die", it's always "you will eventually die, this might forestall it, we're never sure, and there's a big list of potential drawbacks."
a person who can be helped by a medical intervention will die no matter what, but if they get an organ transplant or a pacemaker or continuous dialysis or a cancer removed, they may live a little bit longer, as far as scientists observe, although sometimes with significant difficulties. immunosuppression and chemotherapy both deactivate certain organ systems.
no one can see the future. cancer treatments seem to help some people and be useless for others, and it might all come down to something like, "uh cancer stem cell #13491340 was not destroyed, and there was metastasis." the idea with tumor excision is usually to prevent there from being so many potentially-metastatic stems.
That's not true at all. Would you want to have surgery done if it had a guaranteed 3 month recovery period of incredible pain, a 5% chance of curing you, and a 95% chance of doing nothing, when your alternative is "nothing will hurt, but in 12 months you'll drop dead"?
Not really. A treatment can decrease quality of life to the point where you don't want to live, or perhaps bankrupt your family for a small chance of success. This logic only holds if you assign infinite value to "live at any cost"
