Understanding the challenge in esophageal anastomosis

It has been a tremendous pleasure and honor to serve as guest editor of this AOE series on anastomotic techniques of minimally invasive surgery and management of its complications. Esophageal cancer is a devastating disease that is increasingly affecting patients globally. Esophageal cancer surgery, always seen as terrifying, has made significant progress in the last decade but surgeons still struggle to avoid life threatening complications like anastomotic leaks. When I was invited to contribute with a challenging topic for the journal, I immediately recognized the need to gather different expertise on such difficult task. We have all read and published on different ways of performing minimally invasive esophagectomies, but it is rare to find all available techniques in one source with a template format that allows comparing different experiences. The fact that we have so many different techniques tells a lot about how hard it is to standardize globally and to achieve optimal results. I am delighted to have convinced worldwide renown leaders in this field to contribute their knowledge for this special series. I want to take this opportunity to thank you all and to emphasize once again how honored I am for this responsibility. I invite all readers of this special series to go back and forth through all the details of each paper as I have done myself. At the end, you will have gained a lot of helpful tips that I am sure will improve your every-day practice. And even with all the tips, we know sometimes complications are unavoidable. The original manuscripts on how to handle those complications and the postoperative in general are another very relevant aspect of this guest series. I believe you will enjoy reading the contents as much as I did while editing them. But most of all, I truly hope that with this effort we have contributed a little step forward to benefit our patients.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Annals of Esophagus for the series “Anastomotic Techniques for Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy and Endoscopic Handling of Its Complications”. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: The author has completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://aoe.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/aoe-21-72/coif). The series “Anastomotic Techniques for Minimally Invasive Esophagectomy and Endoscopic Handling of Its Complications” was commissioned by the editorial office without any funding or sponsorship. AN served as an unpaid Guest Editor of the series and serves as an unpaid editorial board member of Annals of Esophagus from February 2020 to January 2022. The author has no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The author is accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Alejandro Nieponice