ABSTRACT
In recent years, natural orifice specimen extraction surgery (NOSES) has been widely used in surgery of colorectal cancer. The rapid development of NOSES is mainly attributed to its own great advantages and values, including the reduction of surgical trauma, the acceleration of postoperative recovery and the reduction of adverse psychological reactions for patients. These advantages of NOSES are also important embodiment and perfect interpretation of the organ functional protection. Organ functional preservation is a hot topic in surgery today, and it is also an inevitable requirement for minimally invasive surgery. Essentially, NOSES and organ functional preservation are proposed in the same background, and the goals are highly compatible. NOSES is an important practitioner of organ functional preservation, and organ functional preservation is also the vane of the development of the theoretical system of NOSES. These two items complement each other and together constitute the important element in the development of modern minimally invasive surgery. In order to comprehensively discuss the relationship between NOSES and organ functional protection, we elaborate the important role and value of functional protection in NOSES from five key procedures of colorectal surgery, namely surgical approach, extent of resection, lymph node dissection, digestive tract reconstruction and specimen extraction.