This volume attempts to demonstrate that increasingly sophisticated diagnostic and staging approaches are helping to move chemotherapy and radiotherapy into the preoperative neoadjuvant setting. This fundamental al teration is based on the awareness that even early-stage solid tumour disease is frequently systemic at the time of presentation, at least on a subclinical level. Although the primary tumour may be controllable by surgery with radiotherapy, the uncontrolled distant disease ultimately determines patient survival. The other perspective driving the neoadjuvant approach is an emerging awareness that, for most solid tumour systems, neoadjuvant treatment responses can facilitate less mutilating surgery with comparable levels of local disease control. These unifying concepts have reached increasing acceptance and are being extended via the crucible of clinical trials. "Surgical Oncology" seeks to impart a sense of what is pertinent in the rapidly evolving field of surgical oncology. By identifying new developments in each solid tumour site, the reader should gain an insight into where the discipline of surgical oncology is headed.
