[Cervical cancer]

Although the surgical treatment for the uterine cervical carcinoma has been accepted as until recently one of the most effective therapies in terms of radicality, various complications following the operation have tormented patients for a long time, resulting in the deterioration of the quality of their lives. The complications include a loss or an impairment of fecundability, morbidities due to the castration, problems of sexual life, urinary disturbances such as dysuria, incontinence and a loss of feeling of urgency, renal dysfunction, persistent constipation and lymphedema on legs. The serious psychological handicaps are included also. During many years, however, the accumulation of the knowledge which is related to a development of the cancer, recognition of the localisation and an extent of the lesion and prognostic factors, has encouraged the developments of improved methods to keep the essential physiological functions and avoiding a loss of radicality. Those are a laser therapy, retaining of ovaries and preservation of pelvic autonomic nerves including bladder branches. Here, indications, methods and the clinical results of those improved surgical methods are presented and the problems remaining to be resolved are discussed.