A commentary on “Ten-year follow-up results of a randomized clinical trial comparing left thoracoabdominal and abdominal transhiatal approaches to total gastrectomy for adenocarcinoma of the oesophagogastric junction or gastric cardia”

Kurokawa and other authors published 10-year outcomes of a Japanese randomized clinical trial comparing left thoracoabdominal approaches (LTA) with abdominal transhiatal approaches (TH) for adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction (AEG) (JCOG9502) (1). That study demonstrated that LTA was not superior to TH regarding AEG patients’ survival, but had a higher incidence of morbidity than TH (2). Moreover, the authors stratified patients into Siewert type II or type III and showed that LTA should be avoided especially for the latter.