• epartment of General Surgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China;
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Objective  Surgical treatment for rectal cancer has been developed for centuries. After anesthetic technics are applied, classic operation procedures for rectal cancer resection are still cited repeatedly. There are few articles regarding to the development history of surgical treatment for rectal cancer, and we summarize it chronologically.
Methods  We searched articles in the past 20 years, dated back to the original journal and explored the development of the operation type.
Results  We summarized more than 100 articles and listed more than 40 articles here. According to the articles retrieved, the surgery for rectal cancer could be dated back to 1739, spanning for more than 270 years. In the premier one hundred years, the resection area was limited and the effect of the treatment was not good. And in the recent one hundred years, the development of surgery conceptions was huge and the related knowledge and skills had been rapidly develop. The operation type for rectal cancer was gradually getting mature.
Conclusions  Surgery treatment for rectal cancer has been through a development of more than two hundred years, with new concepts and technics continuously fused in. Thus the meaning of surgery treatment for rectal cancer has been renewed. Introduction of total mesorectum excision, conception of 2 cm distal resective margin, development of stapling devices, preoperative chemoradiation and appplication of laparoscopic surgery have fasciliated function-preserving operations with minimal invasion, rapid recovery and high survival rate. Appearance of new drugs and improvement of local excision, preoperative chemoradiation, as well as new agents for chemotherapy and target therapy have promoted surgical resection for rectal cancer to a multidisciplinary model.

Citation: XIAO Yi. The Development History of Surgical Treatment for Rectal Cancer. CHINESE JOURNAL OF BASES AND CLINICS IN GENERAL SURGERY, 2012, 19(10): 1130-1135. doi: Copy