Minimally invasive esophagectomy for esophageal cancer: techniques and outcomes

Despite recent improvements in diagnosis, surgical treatment and neo-adjuvant therapy, patients with esophageal cancer have poor prognosis with overall 5-year survival rates of 5-15%.Esophagectomy is the standard treatment for resectable esophageal cancer, but only one third of patients are considered candidates for cure. Minimally invasive techniques have been attempted to improve the postoperative outcomes in such a surgical procedure with high postoperative morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this review is to analyze the minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) techniques in the early-stage esophageal carcinoma. MIE is still crowed with heterogeneous studies with several different techniques. MIE comparing to open esophagectomy procedures have less morbidity with less overall in-hospital incidence of pulmonary infections and shorter duration of ICU admission. In addition,MIE techniques preserve the quality of life better than the open procedures, with faster postoperative recovery.