Surgical Benefits of Prone Position Thoracoscopic Esophagectomy Over Open Thoracic and Thoracoscopic Esophagectomy in Left Lateral Decubitus Position: A Literature Review

Author Info

Kazuo Koyanagi Kentaro Yatabe Miho Yamamoto Soji Ozawa Tadashi Higuchi Yamato Ninomiya

Corresponding Author

Kazuo Koyanagi
Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Tokai University School of Medicine, Isehara, Japan

A B S T R A C T

Objective: We reviewed the surgical outcomes of minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE), especially the number of lymph nodes retrieved, for the patients with esophageal cancer to clarify the surgical benefits of MIE in patients with esophageal cancer. Material and Methods: A systematic literature search was performed, and articles that fully described the surgical results of MIE were selected. Parameters such as operative time, blood loss, the number of lymph nodes retrieved, and postoperative complications were compared among patients undergoing minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) in the left lateral decubitus position (MIE-LP), MIE in the prone position (MIE-PP), and open thoracic esophagectomy (OE). Results: The conversion rate from MIE to OE was very low. MIE-PP was associated with lower blood loss than OE and MIE-LP. Results of a multicenter randomized controlled trial demonstrated that pneumonia and recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis in MIE-PP significantly reduced compared with OE. Although postoperative complications were not different between MIE-PP and MIE-LP, the number of lymph nodes retrieved in MIE-PP was higher than that in MIE-LP. Conclusion: MIE-PP has potential benefits in terms of less surgical invasiveness and improvement of mediastinal lymph node dissection. A prospective randomized control trial using a large number of cases and long-term follow-up is recommended for analyses of appropriate mediastinal lymph node dissection and its impact on oncological benefit.

Article Info

Article Type

Review Article

Publication history

Received: Thu 05, Mar 2020
Accepted: Wed 25, Mar 2020
Published: Tue 31, Mar 2020

Copyright

© 2023 Kazuo Koyanagi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Hosting by Science Repository.
DOI: 10.31487/j.JSO.2020.02.02