As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flies to Cuba Friday for surgery to remove a possibly cancerous growth, top doctors say he could be taking a risk by skipping more respected cancer centers in Brazil or the U.S. if his illness proves more complicated…"If you have a 'common' cancer, that of the breast, colon or lung ... then it's going to be easy to find standards of care that are the same in the U.S., Brazil or Cuba," said Dr. Julian Molina, an oncologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "The problem comes when you have a tumor that's not one of the common ones, and that's what most of us suspect Chavez has."

CBS Atlanta, by Bradley Brooks, 02/24/2012

Additional coverage: Huffington Post, KSWT Ariz, CTV Winnipeg, Winnipeg Free Press, The Globe and Mail, El Universal, Yucatan Hoy, Elgolfo

Tags: Cancer, Celebrity Patients, Cuba, Dr. Julian Molina, Hugo Chavez, Mayo Clinic Rochester, possibly cancerous growth, Venezuelan President