Robotic transthoracic esophagectomy versus thoracoscopic esophagectomy in combined with laparoscopy for esophageal cancer

Extended mediastinal with bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerves (RLNs) lymph node dissection (LND) is critical to curative surgery in the treatment of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Some reports in Robotic transthoracic esophagectomy (RTE) have some advantages over Thoracoscopic esophagectomy (TE) in increasing the exposure and accuracy of mediastinal LND. However, published data was still limited.