Comparison of short-term outcomes and three yearsurvival between total minimally invasive McKeown and dual-incision esophagectomy.

Background: The aim of this study was to compare the short-term outcomes and three-year survival between dual-incision esophagectomy (DIE) and total minimally invasive McKeown esophagectomy (MIME) for esophageal cancer patients with negative upper mediastinal lymph nodes requiring esophagectomy and neck anastomosis.

Methods: One hundred and fifty patients underwent DIE, while 361 patients received total MIME. Perioperative outcomes and three-year survival were compared in unmatched and propensity score matched data between two groups.

Results: Both unmatched and matched analysis demonstrated that there were no significant differences in the number of lymph nodes harvested, or major or minor complication rates between the DIE and MIME groups. Compared with patients who underwent DIE, patients who underwent total MIME had longer operation duration (310 minutes vs. 345 minutes; P  = 0.002). However, there was significantly less intraoperative blood loss in the total MIME compared with the DIE group (191 mL vs. 287 mL, respectively; P  < 0.001). Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated a trend that patients who underwent MIME had longer overall (79.5% vs. 64.1%; P  = 0.063) and disease-free three-year survival (65.3% vs. 82.8%; P  = 0.058) compared with patients who underwent DIE.

Conclusions: Both total MIME and DIE are feasible for the surgical treatment of esophageal cancer patients with negative upper mediastinal lymph nodes requiring esophagectomy and neck anastomosis. However, MIME was associated with better overall and disease-free three-year survival compared with DIE.