Thoracoscopic Versus Open Repair for Esophageal Atresia: The Current Evidence

Thoracoscopic repair of esophageal atresia is always compared to the gold standard of open thoracotomy repair. There are more than 100 papers documenting various levels of success with thoracoscopic repair. We reviewed the literature for systematic review and meta-analysis which compared open and thoracoscopic repair. The search duration was fixed between 1999 and 2023, which is the duration that thoracoscopic repair has existed. The included meta-analyses are summarized for various aspects compared between open and thoracoscopic repair. Comparisons included various aspects like duration of surgery, leak rate, stricture rate, duration of hospital stay, etc. With the given data, thoracoscopic repair has not shown any increased incidence of complications in short or long term over open repair.