To reduce postoperative pulmonary complications, considerable efforts have been made to develop the nontransthoracic esophagectomy for esophageal cancer. For instance, esophageal stripping and transhiatal esophagectomy are the nontransthoracic operations developed for treatment for esophageal cancer. These methods possess several advantages, including non-thoracotomy, less postoperative pain, less postoperative cardiac and pulmonary complications, and safer for elderly patients. However, these two methods are limited with the poor surgical view, poor mediastinal lymph node dissection (especially upper mediastinal lymph nodes), and high risk of bleeding.~In 2015 and 2016, Prof. Fujiwara has developed novel surgical methods on the dissection of upper mediastinal lymph nodes using single-port mediastinoscopy through the cervical incision and the lower mediastinal lymph nodes (including the subcarinal lymph nodes) by laparoscopy, respectively.For the first time, non-transthoracic radical resection of esophageal cancer could be achieved along with the dissection of all the mediastinal lymph nodes. Based on the Fujiwara's method, we further improved this surgical method to thesingle-port inflatable mediastinoscopy combined with laparoscopy for the radical treatment of esophageal cancerand has successfully performed this novel surgical method for the first case in March 2016. We have completed over 200 cases of radical resection of esophageal carcinoma using this novel surgical technique from May 2016 to August 2021.~This is a prospective, multicenter, open clinical study in which 1164 patients (including 10% drop-off rate) who require surgical treatment are scheduled to be included in the study. Prior to any screening process, each subject / legal guardian should sign the informed consent form. Screening tests are used to determine whether each subject is eligible for the study. Eligible subjects who meet the standard will be treated with radical resection of single-hole inflatable mediastinal mirror synchronization with laparoscopic esophageal carcinoma and followed up until 5 years postoperatively. Primary study outcome are the prioperative complication rate and the number of intraoperative lymph node dissection.
We previously developed a novel non-trans thoracic esophagectomy, the single-port inflatable mediastinoscopy combined with laparoscopy for the radical esophagectomy of esophageal cancer.This study is evaluating the feasibility and safety of radical resection of single-port inflatable mediastinal mirror synchronization with laparoscopic esophageal carcinoma, as well as the clinical value of the radical resection of single-port inflatable mediastinal mirror synchronization with laparoscopic esophageal carcinoma as a new minimally invasive operation for esophageal carcinoma.