[Development of general and visceral surgery over the next 20 years]

The discipline of general and visceral surgery will change over the next 20 years due to technical and digital developments. Of particular significance will be computer-assisted surgery, pre-operative simulation and intra-operative navigation and also the further development of the minimally invasive technique itself, which overcomes the present limitations of complex visceral surgical resection and reconstruction and will replace open surgery in more and more fields. It is extremely probable that over the next 20 years surgeons will be dealing increasingly more with old patients and the spectrum of interventions will also change. Oncologic surgery will change due to the high dynamics in the development of new anti-cancer medications. Other fields, such as obesity surgery, will become more important. An irreversible development is the economization of the discipline and quality assurance. This will accelerate the development of high-volume centers for a large proportion of visceral surgical interventions.