To the Editor We read with great interest the article by Huang et al¹ who updated the 5-year overall survival data from the Chinese Laparoscopic Gastrointestinal Surgical Study (CLASS-01) trial of laparoscopic vs open distal gastrectomy among patients with locally advanced gastric cancer (LAGC).

At 5 years, the overall survival rates were 72.6% in the laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (LDG) group and 76.3% in the open distal gastrectomy (ODG) group (log-rank P鈥�=鈥�.19). According to tumor stage, for patients with stage I tumors, the rates of 5-year overall survival were 90.0% in the LDG group vs 88.5% in the ODG group; for patients with stage II tumors, 79.1% in the LDG group vs 84.5% in the ODG group; and for patients with stage III tumors, 58.6% in the LDG group vs 59.5% in the ODG group.¹