Figure 1.

Kaplan-Meier estimation of cumulative incidences of postoperative pneumonia. Black line: conventional open abdomino-thoracic esophagectomy (OE)-group, n = 105 patients. Gray line: hybrid minimally invasive, laparoscopically assisted abdomino-thoracic esophagectomy (LAE)-group, n = 38 patients. Patients, who were discharged, died, or suffered from re-do (revision) surgery were censored from the analysis of cumulative incidences since the day of the event. Censored data are indicated in the figures by vertical ticks. * indicates differences in the cumulative incidence of postoperative pneumonia between both groups at postoperative day 30 (p = 0.01).