Exclusion criteria i Patients who had upper thoracic or cervical esophageal carcinoma ii Unresectable lesions (T4/M1) iii Prior gastric surgery iv Poor performance status (ECOG 3,4) Sample size calculation The number of patients to be included was calculated to be 87 patients in each group based on the assumption that anastomotic leak rate will be reduced to 5% using side-to-side stapled anastomosis. The sample size was calculated by the formula for a power of 80% and alpha error of 0.05.