Background: To evaluate the short-term efficacy of azygos arch-sparing McKeown minimally invasive esophagectomy (McKeown-MIE). Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 221 patients with thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who underwent McKeown-MIE at the Department of Thoracic Surgery of Gaozhou People'sHospital from August 1, 2017 to September 30, 2019. According to whether the azygos arch was preserved or not, the patients were assigned to one of two groups: the preservation group (40 cases) and the ligation group (181 cases). Within 3 months of the operation, the perioperative outcomes and the postoperative short-term efficacy of the two groups were compared.Results: After propensity score (PS) matching, 40 pairs of patients were matched successfully. Between the two groups, there were no statistical difference in intraoperative blood loss, the number of lymph nodes dissected, thoracic drainage duration, fasting time, postoperative hospital stay time, and major postoperative complications (P>0.05). Compared with the ligation group, patients in the preservation group had a shorter intensive care unit (ICU) stay time, a shorter operative time, a lower volume of postoperative thoracic drainage (both the first 3 days and overall) following surgery, a tubular stomach that had a smaller caliber, and a lower incidence of tubular gastric malpositioning (P<0.05). Conclusions: Preserving the azygos arch during a McKeown-MIE is safe and feasible. Doing so, not only effectively restricts the expansion of the gastric conduit, leading to a lower incidence of malpositioning, but also dramatically reduces postoperative thoracic drainage, and ICU stay time.