ABSTRACT
Surgery found a new place in the management of cervical cancer as a tool to solve the problem of positive lymph nodes that were not managed by radiotherapy. Leveuf in France (1931) and Taussig in the United States (1935) proposed a combination of radiation therapy and pelvic lymphadenectomy in order to improve outcomes. This idea was the first step toward the reintroduction of radical surgery, whose official beginning was 1945, the year in which JV Meigs delivered his first paper about the new Wertheim operation. Since the highlight of the new radical surgery was systematic pelvic lymphadenectomy, the vaginal approach clearly could not benefit from the revival of such surgery.
