The History of Esophageal Surgery in Romania

I would begin this history with a brief but eloquent statement made by professor Teodor Horvat, PhD (one, if not the most important, of the "rescuers" of modern thoracic surgery in our country) in the successful preface of the "Treaty of Pathology and Esophageal Surgery" (Romanian Academy Publishing House, Bucharest, 2017): "The esophagus passes through our territory the thorax!" It is an undeniable truth, but so is the extremely small number of thoracic surgeons with expertise in esophageal surgery. Unfortunately, they are very scarce. They are thoracic surgeons who have specialized in thoracic surgery starting from general surgery. But we should not think that in general surgery the number of esophageal daredevils is much higher. They can be counted on the fingers of the members of an esophageal surgical team, to which we can add the anesthesiologist's fingers too! But why this situation? You may be wondering. It is so because esophageal surgery is a very difficult one, it has a pathology with many peculiarities, it requires a series of complex procedures (it does not have simple ones), both for resection and the reconstruction of the esophagus. And besides all that, the esophagus is an organ which, although not the longest, is still the only digestive segment that passes through three regions: the cervical, thoracic, and the abdominal one.