Fig. 1

Flow chart of the patients’ recruitment. Between April 2020 to January 2021, fifty patients who met the eligibility criteria for radical thoracic esophageal cancer surgery were enrolled. Of these, one case with intraoperative evidence of cervical esophageal invasion, four cases in which safe anastomosis with linear staple was judged to be difficult based on surgical findings, and two cases in which the cancer was incompletely resected were excluded as ineligible. Forty-three patients were included in the final analysis