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Bongiolatti et al. Mini-invasive Surg 2020;4:41 I http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2574-1225.2020.28 Page 9 of 11

undesirable, but competitors are now present on the market and could improve developments, diffusion of
ideas and decreasing the costs of robot-assisted surgery.

In conclusion, although possible with a minimally-invasive approach, trans-thoracic esophagectomy is
still associated with significant post-operative complications. It has demonstrated acceptable oncological
outcomes in terms of radicality, lymph node dissection, overall and disease-free survival. The robotic
platform has shown some advantages in lymph node dissection, nerve sparing, improved intra-thoracic
anastomosis and faster recovery after surgery, but large studies are necessary to understand the actual role
of RAMIE in the multimodal treatment of EC.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
Conceptualization:Bongiolatti S
Data collection: Bongiolatti S, Farronato A
Formal Analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources and software: Bongiolatti S
Supervision: Bongiolatti S, Voltolini L
Validation and visualization: all authors
Writing-original draft and writing-review and editing: Bongiolatti S

Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
None.

Conflicts of interest
All authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.

Consent for publication
Not applicable.

Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020.

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