Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy for Esophageal Cancer: Techniques and Outcomes
K. Petropoulos, A. Macheras, T. Liakakos, E. P. MisiakosGeneral reports, no. 2, 2015
Despite recent improvements in diagnosis, surgical treatmentand neo-adjuvant therapy, patients with esophageal cancerhave poor prognosis with overall 5-year survival rates of 5-15%.Esophagectomy is the standard treatment for resectableesophageal cancer, but only one third of patients are consideredcandidates for cure. Minimally invasive techniques have beenattempted to improve the postoperative outcomes in such asurgical procedure with high postoperative morbidity andmortality. The purpose of this review is to analyze theminimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) techniques in theearly-stage esophageal carcinoma. MIE is still crowed withheterogeneous studies with several different techniques. MIEcomparing to open esophagectomy procedures have lessmorbidity with less overall in-hospital incidence of pulmonaryinfections and shorter duration of ICU admission. In addition,MIE techniques preserve the quality of life better than the openprocedures, with faster postoperative recovery.
