Ethical and legal dimensions of prophylactic surgery

Prophylactic surgery is usually a preventive surgical approach performed to significantly reduce or eliminate the risk by total or partial removal of an organ with the risk of developing cancer. Due to nature and the extensive consequences it bears, the intervention should be studied and examined both from a legal and ethical aspect. During this examination, three fundamental issues should be emphasized: confidentiality, the obligation of illumination, and indication. The obligation to comply with the confidentiality of information is a value that needs to be protected in all medical interventions. However, in prophylactic interventions based on the individual's genetic information, the process should be carried out by considering the issues peculiar to the individual's genetic information. However, the duty to inform the party to undergo an operation, namely the obligation of illumination, is also important in terms of the legal concept of "consent," which is essential concerning medical interventions' lawfulness. It should be emphasized within the scope of this obligation that the prophylactic method, together with its serious psychological and social consequences, is based on a potential risk and does not definitively eliminate a given risk. Another issue that stands out in terms of this issue is the obligation of indication of remedies. As is known, only the medical interventions based on indication are recognized as lawfully, which can only be accepted as compulsory according to medical science in other words. In the prophylactic method, the obligation of indication, namely the need to encounter an indication before a surgical operation, should be examined with details since there is a potential risk, even if the risk is not yet present. As a result of this examination, it can be said that the prophylactic method, which serves to reduce the risk, which therefore protects the patient from the potentially developing disease, is to contain an indication because the concept of indication has expanded with the development of modern medicine, and this has led not only therapeutic, but also preventive interventions to be considered within the legal concept of indication.