Author’s reply to “Totally intracorporeal laparoscopic gastrectomy for gastric cancer”

Excerpt

We thank Professor Dimitrios Roukos for interest in our article. In answer to his letter, we would like to react to his comments. Since laparoscopy-assisted distal gastrectomy was first reported by Kitano and colleagues in 1994, the number of patients undergoing laparoscopic gastrectomy (LG) for early gastric cancer (EGC) has been increasing rapidly in Japan, where there is a high incidence of EGC. Although there is conclusive evidence to support short-term efficacy of LG for EGC, there is still uncertainty about oncological efficacy of LG. At present, in Korea and Japan, phase III randomized control settings on oncological efficacy of LG for advanced gastric cancer are ongoing. …