Interaction between Medical Treatment and Minimally Invasive Surgical Treatment for the Malignancies of the Digestive Tract.

Recently, endoscopic diagnosis and treatment methods for early cancer in the digestive tract have made rapid progress. As for surgery, laparoscopic and thoracoscopic techniques have achieved rapidly advancing development in the last 2 decades. Early detection of the malignant lesion and the evolution of endoscopic and surgical device enabled in performing the minimally invasive surgery. Collaboration of medical treatment and minimally invasive surgery for advanced cancer is ongoing in the case of some conditions and in a few institutes. In this review, the contents of the core symposia on "Interaction between medical treatment and minimally invasive surgical treatment for the malignancies of the digestive tract", held at the 11, 12 and 13th annual meeting of the Japanese Gastroenterological Association, are summarized. At each annual meeting, the core symposium focused primarily on gastric, colorectal, and esophageal cancer treatment. For gastric cancer, endoscopic resection and laparoscopic surgery were 2 important key words. For colorectal cancer, multidisciplinary therapy was a major key word. And for esophageal cancer, endoscopic resection, chemoradiotherapy, thoracoscopic surgery and salvage surgery were key words. Patients' survival and quality of life are expected to further advance as a result of the collaboration of such therapeutic modalities.