[Oncologic "second-look" today].

The Wangensteen's proposal of the SLL is far from us, not only chronologically but, what is more meaningful, technologically. Radiology, with its digestive tract barium meal or enema, was at his time the only mean entrusted for the instrumental study of the patient, and the medical oncology was at its very dawn. The Wangensteen's purpose was to discover with a SLL the recurrence (metastasis or relapse) of the neoplastic disease after a first demolitive surgical approach, not waiting its late clinical evidence. And this on the conviction that also the recurrent neoplastic disease can be again successfully treated by surgery when early detected. Many facts have happened since the 50's, and if it is by now demonstrated true that also the neoplastic recurrence can be successfully treated by surgery--naturally for particular neoplasms and in particular localization--it is equally true that diagnostic possibilities have widely evolved permitting the non invasive detection and localization of neoplastic recurrences with remarkable accuracy. Thence the renewed possibility of a reinterventional surgery.