Patient recovery after surgery for oesophageal cancer isn’t influenced by using standard or keyhole incisions

Press release issued: 26 March 2024

New research has found no evidence of a difference between recovery time and complications when comparing standard and keyhole surgical incisions for the treatment of oesophageal cancer (cancer of the gullet). The study, led by the University of Bristol Medical School and published in the British Journal of Surgery, showed surgeons treating patients with oesophageal cancer do not need to change their practice if they have a strong preference for either procedure type.

Oesophageal cancer is the tenth most common cancer globally. It causes one in 18 cancer-related deaths. If only the oesophagus and local lymph nodes are affected surgeons usually perform a procedure called an oesophagectomy. This means they remove the oesophagus to try and cure the cancer. The two most common ways of doing this use either standard incisions (two large cuts) or ‘keyhole’ incisions (one large cut and several small ones).

The ROMIO study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). It involved patients being randomly assigned to two groups. One of the groups had standard surgery (263 people) and the other had keyhole surgery (264 people).

Researchers found no differences between the groups in relation to:

recovery three months after surgery, as measured by patient completed questionnaires about physical function
how often patients developed complications and how severe the complications were
the extent to which the cancer was removed (it was equally well removed in both groups)

Read the full University of Bristol news story

‘Laparoscopic versus open abdominal surgery and thoracotomy for patients with oesophageal cancer: The ROMIO pragmatic parallel group randomised controlled trial‘ by The ROMIO Study Group in the British Journal of Surgery [open access]