Minimally invasive versus open oesophagectomy for patients with oesophageal cancer: a multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled trial

Although, minimally invasive oesophagectomy was first described in the early 1990s, there is a paucity of high quality data on the relative merits of minimally-invasive versus open oesophagectomy (1,2). This is contrast to colorectal surgery where a number of randomised control trials have conclusively demonstrated the efficacy of laparoscopic colorectal resections (3). The reason for this disparity in evidence base lies in the relative rarity of oesophageal cancers combined with the variety of potential surgical approaches for resection oesophageal cancers (e.g., transhiatal, 2 stage, 3 stage and hybrid laparoscopic approaches). The paper by Beire et al. (4) is therefore very significant addition to the literature on the topic of minimally invasive oesophagectomies.