Laparoscopic surgery for cancer: are we ready?

Following feasibility studies more and more large prospective reports even randomised trials document the treatment of digestive cancer using a laparoscopic approach. While the spectre of port-site recurrences, once so alarming has faded, it has become a challenge for laparoscopic surgeons to provide long-term follow-up. There is good class II and III evidence that staging laparoscopy (SL) has a value for oesophageal, gastric, pancreatic and hepatobiliary cancer as well as for intra-abdominal lymphomas since it adds to primary staging and often alters the clinical stage of the disease and hence the management of the individual patient. For minimally invasive oesophagectomy and gastric cancer surgery several series have demonstrated shorter perioperative morbidity and hospital stay however at present most studies report smaller numbers of selected patients and long term follow up is rare. The laparoscopic resection of pancreatic malignancies is not reported to be feasible, safe or potentially beneficial for the patient while the curative resection of suspected early gallbladder cancer is a poor indication. Nevertheless laparoscopy is documented to be safe and applicable for small malignant liver lesions and the Lacy trial was significantly in favour of laparoscopy-assisted colectomy, predominantly for stage III disease. Bearing in mind that in many fields of digestive cancer surgery, laparoscopy should still be conducted as part of a trial, it is safe to say that "we are ready" for this revolution to arise.