Objective As one of the common approaches in minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE),thoracoscopic esophagectomy (TE),was developed to reduce the trauma resulting from the surgical treatment of esophageal cancer.The aim of this study is to retrospectively analyze the clinicopathologic factors and perioperitive complieations of 366 patients underwent TE,evaluate the characteristic of complications after TE by reviewing the records.Methods From Jan 2009 to Dec 2012,366consecutive TE for esophageal cancer were performed in our department.The demographic characteristics,as well as the intraoperative and postoperative variables were collected retrospectively and evaluated.Among these 366 cases,278 were male and 88 were female.The mean age was (60.9 ± 8.3) years,with (4.6 ± 2.0) cm for mean length of lesion.Totally,there were 269 cases of TE and 97 cases of thoracolaparoscopic esophagectomy (TLE) were performed.Results The total operative time was (304.3 ±66.2) min.The mean blood loss was (299.0 ± 197.5) ml,while 19.1 ±5.9 retrieved nodes were harvested.In these patients,31 cases (8.5％) need conversion to thoracotomy during operation.Nine postoperative deaths were observed,and the operative mortality was 2.5％ (9/366).Totally,the incidence of intraoperative complication was 5.2％(19/366),and the postoperative mobidity was 44.3％ (162/366).Conclusion The most common intraoperative complication of TE in this study is bleeding (with incidence of 3.6％,13/366),while the anastomotic leakage (16.7％,61/366) is the most common postoperative complication.Among our patients in this study,the major cause of postoperative death is anastomotic stoma-thoracic fistula and anastomotic stoma-tracheal fistula.