Factors of technical difficulty in conventional and traction-assisted esophageal endoscopic submucosal dissection

Background The traction assisted (TA) method has reduced the technical difficulty associated with esophageal endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD). However, it is unclear which factors associated with difficulty have been improved by the TA-ESD method. We aimed to evaluate and compare difficulty factors between conventional and TA-ESD. Methods We retrospectively enrolled patients treated by ESD from Apr 2010 to Jun 2014 for the conventional ESD cohort and from Jan 2016 to Dec 2019 for the TA-ESD cohort. Difficult cases were defined as; (1) ≥ 120 min ESD procedure time, (2) intraoperative perforation, or (3) piecemeal resection. We explored and compared the factors associated with technical difficulty in each cohort. Results The conventional and TA-ESD cohorts included 285 (299 lesions) and 387 (421 lesions) patients, respectively. For difficult cases, the conventional and TA-ESD cohorts had 91 (30%) and 71 (17%) lesions, respectively. Multivariate logistic regression showed that ≥ 30 mm lesion length (odds ratio (OR) 6.85, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.47–13.50), lower esophagus (OR 2.37, 95% Cl 1.34–4.21), > 1/2 circumference (OR 2.26, 95% CI 1.28–3.99), and left wall (OR 2.72, 95% CI 1.42–5.20) in the conventional ESD cohort, and ≥ 30 mm lesion length (21.30, 95% CI 4.75–95.30), lower esophagus (OR 3.05, 95% CI 1.52–6.13), and > 1/2 circumference (OR 6.40, 95% CI 3.06–13.40) in the TA-ESD cohort, were independently associated with technical difficulty. Conclusions TA-ESD can reduce the difficulty in cases including lesions in the left wall; however, cases in the lower esophagus and large lesions were still difficult to simplify.