LAUSR

Minimally invasive approaches for oncologic surgery have been steadily gaining favor, with lower complication rates in randomized trials for both laparoscopic and thoracoscopic and robotic esophagectomies compared with open esophagectomy. Analysis of the National Cancer Database shows increasing adoption of minimally invasive techniques over time, with 55.9% of esophagectomies performed using a minimally invasive approach in 2015. However, these approaches can be challenging to perform, with significant learning curves to achieve these results.