Published in:
01-06-2008 | Letter
Laparoscopic gastrectomy: advances enable wide clinical application
Authors:
T. Liakakos, D. Roukos
Published in:
Surgical Endoscopy
|
Issue 6/2008
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Excerpt
The current trend is toward laparoscopic gastrectomy. Although no level 1 randomized evidence or cost-effective analysis exists to show the superiority of laparoscopic gastrectomy over open gastrectomy, the indications and use of laparoscopic gastrectomy in clinical practice have been expanded beyond the carefully selected older patients described in the report by Singh et al. [
1] in a recent issue of this journal. A current published report shows the clinical use of laparoscopic gastrectomy for early-stage gastric cancer with a trend also toward locally advanced carcinoma [
2] and for carriers of
CDH1 mutations to prevent hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC) syndrome [
3,
4]. As laparoscopic gastrectomy currently is being applied in an environment of strong competition within various countries and among specialized institutions worldwide to attract patients, what are the benefits and risks of the laparoscopic approach? …