Thoracoscopic esophagectomy: Are there benefits?

Video-assisted thoracoscopic esophagectomy and radical lymph node dissection for esophageal cancer

“…Tumor implantation in the surgical wound (port-site recurrence) is a well-recognized complication of thoracoscopic surgery [7,13,16,18]; however, no patient in our series developed this problem. Seeding may have been avoided because contiguous spread was a contraindication to VATS and lymphatic tissue was handled gently.…”

Is minimally invasive surgery beneficial in the management of esophageal cancer? A meta-analysis

“…The decrease in total morbidity and respiratory complications in the MIE group may be related to the less invasive nature of the operation, which allows improved patient mobilization following MIE, thereby facilitating Meta-analytic research such as in this study has several limitations that must be taken into account when considering its results. First, there are a lot of case series [19][20][21][22][23][24] on minimally invasive approaches to esophagectomy but no randomized controlled trials to compare. However, we should take into account that it is difficult to conduct a prospective randomized study within a reasonable timeframe.…”

Laparoscopic esophagectomy in the palliative treatment of advanced esophageal cancer after radiochemotherapy

“…Two different techniques have been used more frequently: thoracoscopic esophageal mobilization [7,9,37] and the laparoscopic approach [10,24,39]. No clear advantages have been demonstrated in terms of postoperative morbidity and mortality for the thoracoscopic approach, as compared with thoracotomy [18,34], and in some cases, the mortality has been relevant [37]. In particular, pulmonary complications have not been significantly different.…”