[Surgical oncology--oncologic surgery]

Oncologic surgery still is the fundamental principle of cancer therapy. This is only useful when leading to a complete tumor extirpation (so-called R0-resection). Under these conditions an improvement of prognosis can be achieved. Unfortunately this aim can only be reached in some 50-70% of our patients. For all the other patients non-surgical therapy in surgery has to be secured by oncologic surgery. A most interesting development takes at present the preoperative chemotherapy or radiation therapy respectively. The aim is down-staging of the tumor to make a final R0-resection possible after all.