Effectiveness of long-term tube feeding intervention in preventing skeletal muscle loss after minimally invasive esophagectomy

Purpose Esophageal cancer is a lethal tumor typically treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy and surgery. For patients undergoing esophagectomy, postoperative enteral nutrition is important in preventing complications. Sarcopenia is associated with poor postoperative outcomes in esophageal cancer. In this study, we evaluated the benefits of tube feeding intervention and compared its short- and long-term outcomes in patients who underwent esophagectomy. Methods Propensity score matching was performed in 303 patients who underwent esophagectomy at Kobe University Hospital between 2010 and 2020. Patients were divided into feeding and nonfeeding jejunostomy tube groups ( n = 70 each). The feeding jejunostomy tube group was further divided into long-term (≥ 60 days) and short-term (