Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy
摘要
Esophagectomy with total mediastinal lymph node dissection is performed as the standard procedure to control lymph node metastasis. However, esophagectomy by the thoracotomy is invasive and can result in a high incidence of complications, particularly pulmonary complications [Watson. World J Surg. 1994;18(3):361–6]. We introduce a novel operative technique to dissect lymph nodes adjacent to the recurrent laryngeal nerve and can prevent recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy by minimally invasive procedure, which we called the native tissue preservation technique. In this technique, there was no damage to the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which was kept in its anatomical position. Although a small incision is important, we believe that preventing complications is a more important issue, and this is a minimally invasive esophagectomy. In this chapter, we explain minimally invasive esophagectomy with total mediastinal lymph node dissection.