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Fukunaga. Mini-invasive Surg 2019;3:26 Mini-invasive Surgery
DOI: 10.20517/2574-1225.2019.32

Editorial Open Access

Advances in the minimally invasive management of
gastric and esophagogastric junction cancer

Tetsu Fukunaga
Department of Gastroenterology and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Juntendo University Hospital, Tokyo 113-8421, Japan.

Correspondence to: Prof. Tetsu Fukunaga, Department of Gastroenterology and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Juntendo
University Hospital, Tokyo 113-8421, Japan. E-mail: t2fukunaga@juntendo.ac.jp

How to cite this article: Fukunaga T. Advances in the minimally invasive management of gastric and esophagogastric junction
cancer. Mini-invasive Surg 2019;3:26. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2574-1225.2019.32

Received: 2 Sep 2019 First Decision: 2 Sep 2019 Revised: 10 Sep 2019 Accepted: 11 Sep 2019 Published: 19 Sep 2019
Science Editor: Tetsu Fukunaga Copy Editor: Jia-Jia Meng Production Editor: Tian Zhang

It is a great honor and pleasure to act as guest editor for this special issue where many of these key
international opinion leaders have generously contributed to help coalesce the goal for the topic of
advances in the minimally invasive management of gastric and esophagogastric junction (EGJ) cancer.

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers are aggressive diseases and ranks the most common diagnosed cancer and
[1]
death causes worldwide . Surgical resection with lymph node dissection (LND) is still the only potentially
curative therapy. Minimally invasive surgeries including laparoscopy and robot are widely used in the
treatment of GI cancers.

The operation procedures for gastric cancer base on the location of tumor and include distal, proximal
or total gastrectomy. Introduction of laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) has shown promising results and
[2]
therefore gained popularity worldwide. Van den Berg et al. outlined the current state of LG for gastric
[3]
cancer and its future perspective. Laparoscopic LND is preferred for early gastric cancer now . However,
the safety and oncologic validity for advanced gastric cancer (AGC) are still being debated. Some clinical
trials have been gradually performed focusing AGC treated by LG recently and reported no inferior short-
[4]
term outcomes compared with open surgery . Shimada et al. discussed the clinical indications and
[5]
limitations dealing with LND for AGC, and also the technical tips. LG may be not suitable for all AGC
patients, but the role for AGC cannot be underestimated. The authors also discussed the value of LND
combined with neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, conversion surgery and other treatments. It is believed that
after the long-term outcomes of many ongoing large-scaled phase III trials released in the near future, we
can get more powerful evidences. As society ages, older gastric cancer patients are increasing. It is indicated
that age may be an independent predictor of increased morbidity and mortality. Few studies about older

© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
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and indicate if changes were made.

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