[Past, present and future of oncology]

The past, present and future of oncology are presented using the example of cervical cancer. In 1908, Walter Schauenstein described the histology of atypical squamous epithelium at the uterine cervix. This was one of the first descriptions of what today is called carcinoma in situ. In the 1950s, Ernst Navratil initiated the concept of the early diagnosis of cervical cancer based on colposcopy and cytology. Erich Burghardt's studies on the morphogenesis of cervical cancer in the 1970s led to a reduction of radicality in the treatment of early invasive types of cervical carcinoma. Conization only and simple total hysterectomy have all but replaced radical procedures for patients with microcarcinomas. Today the treatment of cervical cancer is individualized according to tumor size as determined by preoperative MRI. The lymph node status is determined intraoperatively by frozen section histology and influences the extent of the procedure. Molecular methods and genetic techniques are the future of oncology. However, inherited factors do not seem to play an important role in the development of cervical cancer. Surgery is still the basis of the treatment of this disease.