Esophagectomy in Middle and Lower Thoracic Esophageal Cancer Patients Through Left Versus Right Transthoracic Approach

Esophageal carcinoma is an aggressive malignant disease with poor prognosis. Surgical resection remains the most effective method for this malignancy. As to the middle and lower thoracic esophageal cancer patients without upper mediastinal lymph node metastasis, the rational transthoracic approach either through right or left chest has not been clarified to date due to lack of large scale multicenter randomized trials. Although some randomized trials had been finished in single-center, there is no enough evidences that all lower and middle thoracic esophageal cancer patients should be surgically treated throuhg right chest approch. It is widely recognized that left thoracotomy approach(Sweet procedure) is not appropriate in the patients with upper mediastinal lymph node metastasis, because patients can benefit from the right thoracotomy approach, through which upper mediastinal lymph node can be dissected completely and may get a better long-term survival.Therefore,in this study, the enrolled patients are the middle and lower thoracic esophageal cancer patients without preoperative upper mediastinal lymph node metastasis by CT and/or ultrasound, and 10 hospitals will participate this study. Through comparison in postoperative complications and long term outcomes as well as locoregional recurrence between the left and right apppoach, hopefully we can answer the question whether the right or left transthoracic procedure is the optimal approach for treating middle and lower thoracic esophageal cancer patients without preoperative upper mediastinal lymph node metastasis.