Historically, surgery was the sole treatment for cancer with pioneering surgeons pushing the boundaries of data down through the millenia . Only within the last century have non surgical means provided an adjunct or more rarely, an alternate to surgery . Despite the advances in medical and radiation oncology, surgery remains the sole modality with the potential to cure most solid cancers. Surgeons have a pivotal role in cancer treatments and research, leading the diagnostic and treatment pathways for many cancers from counselling patients about their diagnosis through to surgery and aftercare. they need also led many of the good advances in cancer research.

However, cancer care has evolved very rapidly over the previous couple of decades and thus a replacement sort of surgeon is required to stay pace with these changes. not is surgery alone the sole treatment for many solid malignancies but a mixture of surgery and multi-modal therapies (with highly focussed radiotherapy, targeted molecular therapies and poly-chemotherapy) becoming the fashionable standard of care.

As a result, the surgeon, who 40 years ago would often be the sole specialist to possess contact with most cancer patients, can not add isolation but must lead a multi-disciplinary team. they need to be quite just a technician and must understand the biology and explanation of the disease also because the contributions made by other disciplines to the cancer patients’ treatment. it’s at now that the surgeon becomes a surgical oncologist.

Collaboration with radiation and medical oncologists on the utilization of neoadjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy to reinforce or permit surgery possible and on the indications for adjuvant therapy after surgery.
Collaboration with radiologists to plan surgery or optimise resection margins.
Collaboration with pathologists to make sure appropriate primary and adjuvant therapies, (tumour immunophenotyping and mutational analysis to optimise treatment) and to quality assure surgery (e.g. assessment of circumferential resection margins following TME)
Collaboration with geneticists in hereditary cancers to optimise treatment, prevention or screening strategies (BRCA1, FAP)