Laparoscopic pancreas-preserving total gastrectomy for proximal gastric cancer. A case and technical report

Although total gastrectomy with distal pancreatectomy has been the standard surgical treatment for advanced gastric cancer, this procedure is frequently complicated by leakage of pancreatic juice and postoperative diabetes mellitus. We present the case of a 74-year-old woman with proximal gastric cancer who underwent a laparoscopic modification of an open pancreas-preserving procedure first described by Maruyama et al. in 1995. With this novel technique, there is no pancreatic leakage, and at 12-month follow-up our patient remains free of diabetes. Herein we give the details of our new method and offer some caveats for its performance.