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Manual compared with mechanical cervical oesophagogastric anastomosis: a randomised trial
E Laterza1, G de' Manzoni, G F Veraldi
1First Division of General Surgery, Istituto di Semeiotica Chirurgica, University of Verona, Italy.
Objective:
To compare the short and medium term result of hand-sewn and stapled anastomoses after oesophagectomy.
Design:
Randomised study.
Setting:
Teaching hospital, Italy.
Subjects:
41 patients who required oesophagectomy between February 1993 and December 1996.
Interventions:
Oesophagectomy and left cervical gastroplasty.
Main Outcome Measures:
Mortality and morbidity.
Result:
21 patients were randomised to have the anastomosis hand-sewn, and 20 to have it stapled. The two groups were comparable. 3 patients died in hospital (2 in the hand-sewn and 1 in the stapled group), and the remainder were followed up a mean of 21 months (range 6-34). There was one clinical leak in the hand-sewn group compared with 3 in the stapled group, and 1 further radiological leak in the stapled group. 2 patients in the hand-sewn and 3 in the stapled group developed strictures.
Conclusion:
Though the numbers are too small to be assessed statistically, we think that these result are sufficient to persuade us that oesophagogastric anastomoses should be hand-sewn rather than stapled.