Free jejunal graft for repair of cervical esophagus.

We have operated upon six patients with cervical esophageal carcinoma and reconstructed these with free jejunal graft. The pathology of all six patients was squamous cell carcinoma, and no patient had apparent distant metastasis. The procedure was a two team approach. While the surgical oncology team resected the esophageal tumor, the microvascular team harvested the jejunal graft. The range of warm ischemia for the free jejunal graft was 1-2.5 hr, and no graft was lost because of recirculation failure. The range of operative time was 5-6.5 hr. There was no operative mortality. There were two minor cervical wound infections, both healed with conservative management. Hospital stay ranged from 10 to 15 days. The swallowing mechanism was satisfactory in all patients. We believe that the free jejunal graft is the procedure of choice for reconstruction of the cervical esophagus.