Comparison of Laparoscopic Versus Open Total Gastrectomy for Locally Advanced Gastric Cancer: a Prospective Randomized Control Trial

Gastric cancer (GC) is a significant public health issue worldwide. Surgical resection and lymphadenectomy is the first option for curative treatment of this disease. For tumors located in the middle and/or upper third of the stomach, open total gastrectomy (OTG) has long been the standard surgery.

While the advantage of laparoscopic distal gastrectomy over open distal gastrectomy for not only early gastric cancer (EGC) but also locally advanced gastric cancer (AGC) had been proven, the use of laparoscopic total gastrectomy (LTG) for GC, particularly for AGC, has not been widely accepted due to technical challenges with lymphadenectomy at the distal pancreas and the splenic hilum as well as the complexity of the esophago-jejunal reconstruction. Recently, there has been advancement in laparoscopic techniques and improved surgical experience, a standard procedure of LTG has been established, leading to increase utilization of LTG, especially for EGC. Two large RCTs, KLASS-03 in Korea and CLASS-02 in China, provided good evidence for the advantages of LTG for EGC. However, for AGC, some prior studies have demonstrated the safety of LTG compared to OTG but lacked significant data for survival. Until now, there have been no completed RCTs to determine the short- and long-term outcomes of LTG for AGC.

In the research center, LTG has been accepted as a standard procedure for EGC since 2008 and for AGC since 2013. In Vietnam and other low-to-middle-income countries, most GC was diagnosed in an advanced stage. It is needed to have evidence of the feasibility, safety, and oncological results of LTG for locally advanced GC. Investigators performed this study to compare the technical feasibility, short- and long-term outcomes of LTG versus OTG for stage T2-4a GC.