Laparoscopic surgery for rectal cancer and total mesorectal excision

Over the past few decades, the surgical approach to rectal cancer has undergone a considerabIe evolution toward better survival and more focus on patient quality of life, as is shown by the increase in sphincter~ saving resections. At the end of the 1970s, staplers allowed very low colorectal anastomoses, sphincter-savìng surgery was bom, and abdominoperineal resectìons diminished significantly, but even if the oncological results did not impair, they also did not improve. In the last 20 years, on the contrary, the treatment of rectal cancer has profited from neoadjuvant therapies and from the knowledge of the analOmy of '~mesorectum."