Role of Surgical Oncology in Improving Cancer Survival

Surgical oncology is commonly regarded as the field of surgery dealing with cancer. In the 19th century, with the advent of modern surgical and anesthesiological principles, surgeons slowly dared into the removal of tumors and the affected organs. The notion arose that malignancies can be cured by resecting them with a sufficiently wide tissue margin, which culminated in the approach pioneered by William Steward Halsted, who performed extensive resections for breast cancer not only comprising a mastectomy, but also the pectoralis muscles and the entire axillary lymphatic tissue, thereby reducing recurrence rates substantially