We thank Maas et al. for their letter regarding our review article [1] of minimally invasive oesophagectomy for cancer published in Surgical Endoscopy. We also thank them for agreeing with the content of our paper, which is very encouraging.

The omission of Scheepers et al.’s paper [2] is regrettable, the inclusion of which would have been useful for readers.

We are looking forward to the results of the TIME trial [3], which will provide useful information regarding the differences when performing oesophagectomy via open transthoracic versus minimally invasive transthoracic approach. I think this trial is long overdue.