[Recent surgical treatment of thoracic esophageal carcinoma]

Nowadays, surgery for a thoracic esophageal carcinoma is accomplished safely, however, there still remain many problems concerning curative resection. Cancerous recurrences of the lymph node is still high against to lymph node dissection around thoracoabdominal region. Therefore, surgery should endeavour to prevent such lymphatic recurrences. In the patients with a carcinoma in the upper or middle third of the esophagus, who underwent extended radical esophagectomy, a significantly high incidence of metastasis in the recurrent nerve lymphatic chain was noted in comparison with that in patients with that in those who underwent standard radical resection. Complete resection of the recurrent nerve lymphatic chain is generally difficult through the thoracic approach alone, and such approach might be the factor causing the poor prognosis after standard radical surgery for an upper or middle thoracic esophageal carcinoma. Accordingly, extended radical surgery by the cervicothoracoabdominal approach can produced improved surgical curability for an upper or middle thoracic esophageal carcinoma. On the other hand, pulmonary complications are still a major postoperative complication following radical esophagectomy due to extended radical lymphadenectomy around the paratracheobronchial region. So, it is now clear that we should preserve the right bronchial artery and pulmonary nerves branched from the vagus nerve during the thoracic procedure, if these unaffected by cancerous invasion. Adopting this procedure resulted in a marked decrease in the incidence rate of postoperative severe pulmonary complications. Finally, in the near future we expect to develop criteria to select the best treatment for each specific individual based on preoperative studies of the biological characteristics of the carcinoma.