ABSTRACT
More than 100 years ago, esophagectomy began to be used for obstructive esophageal diseases. Czerny resected the cervical esophagus for a 50-year old woman with esophageal cancer in 1877, and she survived for 15 months. Jejunal interposition was performed in a patient with benign esophageal stricture by Roux and Herzen in 1907. Kelling was the first to use colon as a substitute for the esophagus in 1911. The first successful thoracic esophagectomy was undertaken by Franz Torek in 1913. No attempt was made to perform a reconstruction and the patient fed herself through a gastrostomy until she died from a stroke 13 years later. Ohsawa performed a gastroesophagostomy through an abdominal approach after resection of a cardiac cancer in 1932. Adams and Phemister performed a left thoracic subtotal esophagectomy for cancer in 1938 and undertook an esophagogastric anastomosis in the thorax. A combined left thoracoabdominal subtotal esophagectomy for cancer was initially reported by Sweet in 1945. Ivor Lewis undertook a three stage esophagectomy first in 1946, and three-field esophagectomy was first used in the treatment for esophageal cancer by Akiyama in 1981.
