Application of full lateral decubitus position with cephalic parallel approach in robotic-assisted minimally invasive esophagectomy

After it was introduced at the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands in 2003 (1), robot-assisted minimally invasive esophagectomy (RAMIE) has been used for esophageal surgery due to its increased magnification, dexterity, and 3D visual clarity (2). Although several studies believed that RAMIE is equivalent or even superior to video-assisted thoracoscopic minimally invasive esophagectomy (VAMIE) in facilitating thoracoscopic procedures such as lymphadenectomy (3-5), it still needs to overcome several shortcomings