2004 年 16 巻 3 号 p. 253-257
Esophageal lymphangioma is very rare, with only 16 cases described to date to our knowledge. Here, we report an additional case seen at our hospital, and review 15 of the previous cases that were described in detail. Esophageal lymphangioma can be treated with endoscopic resection or surgical resection under thoracotomy. However, endoscopic resection should only be selected after careful consideration. Five of the 15 previous cases were resected via open thoracotomy. Lymphangioma is a benign tumor so any surgical resection should be minimally invasive. We employed thoracoscopic resection in our case, which had the advantages in treating esophageal lymphangioma of being minimally invasive, associated with a low rate of complications, and giving a good quality of life after surgery. This is the first report of thoracoscopic resection for esophageal lymphangioma.
