A tumor was found in my mom's ampulla by pure accident in october. The biopsy showed no cancer, just a benign tumor. The doctors lagged on getting her treated and recently she had an ampullectomy and got the ampulla removed. It had just been 6 months and that tumor showed to be cancer. My mom had no symptoms, pain, nothing whatsoever. They did a CT scan to see if the cancer had spread and it shows no sign of cancer anywhere. Yet, the surgeon insists on doing the Whipple procedure "just in case" she has cancer. My question is before doing that, isn't there a way to determine if in fact she still has some cancer left. Since, in my opinion, it was determine on time because she didn't have any symptoms at all, wouldn't it be possible that the cancer was completely contained in the ampulla and now has been removed. Are there other less invasive procedures besides the Whipple that can be done?