β Scribed by T. Crofts
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
are to be congratulated on their results for oesophageal resection (Br J Surg 1984; 71: 75C-1) and the honesty with which they are presented. I concur with their conclusion that in appropriate patients surgical resection should be the treatment of choice. Two points are worthy of note.
The proportion of resection margins with microscopic involvement of tumour tissue was high as reported in other series from China' that have shown 5 cm to be inadequate to guarantee clearance of oesophageal lesions.
Of the possible avoidable deaths in the series one related to anastomosis leakage and one to sepsis. These too may be related to the level of resection as the vast majority of their anastomoses were performed within the chest.
It would appear that even for palliation total oesophagectomy with extrapleural anastomosis may be a means of further improving their already satisfactory results for surgical treatment of this terrible disease.
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