[Perspective of cancer treatment in new era]

Treatment for solid cancers mainly consists of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Since proportion of surgical treatment had been too high comparing to the others in Japan, the government policy to facilitate chemotherapy and radiotherapy has been implemented. In the meanwhile, many recent clinical trials have shown the limitation of surgical treatment, i.e., local control by surgery does not always contribute to over-all survival because of distant recurrence. Therefore, multimodal treatments such as preoperative chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy have been vigorously used in this decade. Moreover, treatment with novel concept, such as molecular target agents or heavy particle radiotherapy has been gradually spread in clinical activity. The selection of treatment would become more and more difficult for doctors as well as patients in the near future.