[Surgery for rectal cancer]

During the last decade surgical treatment of rectal cancer has seen various improvements. Partial or total mesorectal excision (TME) became standard procedure. The surgical quality of the TME has a high effect on prognosis. Besides metastases, the circumferential resection margin receives the most attention. As recent studies established a distal resection margin of 1 cm, the rate of continence-preserving resections has grown, especially after neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy. In the hands of an expert, laparoscopic rectal resection is a technically safe procedure. Its oncological efficacy cannot yet be decided. Modern therapy for rectal cancer comprises multilateral considerations and therefore needs a multimodal orientation.