Short-term outcomes of robot-assisted versus thoracoscopic-assisted minimally invasive esophagectomy

Robot-assisted (RA) and thoracoscopic-assisted (TA) minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE) are surgical techniques for the treatment of esophageal cancer. This study aims to compare short-term outcomes of RAMIE to TAMIE. We conducted a single-center retrospective analysis between January 2016 and December 2019, including 1012 consecutive patients who underwent MIE, 437 in the RAMIE group and 575 in the TAMIE group. A 1:1 propensity score matching (PSM) analysis was performed to compare short-term outcomes. The vast majority of patients had squamous cell carcinoma (972/1012, 96.0%). Radical resection (R0) was performed in 945 (93.4%) patients with a mean total number of dissected lymph nodes of 22.6±11.0. The incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) was 44.1% (446/1012). The median length of hospital stay was 9 days, and no 30-day mortality was observed. We evaluated short-term outcomes in 544 patients (272 pairs) treated with RAMIE or TAMIE after a 1:1 PSM. Compared with TAMIE group, patients received RAMIE had shorter operative time (291.6±60.5 vs 247.2±51.0min, P0.05). RAMIE is an alternative minimally invasive option to TAMIE, with promising oncological results especially in left RLN lymph node dissection and comparable short-term outcomes.