Surgery for esophageal cancer is a surgery with high surgical risk, but as surgical techniques, anesthesia, and perioperative treatments are becoming more and more perfect, the surgical resection rate, complications, and mortality rate have decreased significantly. Surgical risk comes from many aspects. Esophageal cancer surgery firstly needs to separate the tissues of chest cavity, then carry out tumor resection, lymph node dissection, and finally needs to reconstruct the gastroesophageal tube. In the process of separating the tissues of chest cavity, esophageal cancer surgery may damage the surrounding organs, lymph, blood vessels and nerves, such as damaging the lungs, leading to pneumothorax, dyspnea, lung infection, etc., damaging the thoracic duct, leading to celiac disease, damaging the blood vessels, leading to intra-operative hemorrhage, and damaging the laryngeal recurrent nerve, leading to postoperative hoarseness. After tumor resection, lymph node dissection and gastroesophageal reconstruction in esophageal cancer surgery, complications such as postoperative incision pain, anastomotic fistula, anastomotic stenosis, and the symptom of hypophagia can occur. The risk of surgery is also related to a variety of factors such as the patient’s age, the complexity of the disease, and the presence or absence of co-morbidities. If esophageal cancer is diagnosed, please follow the doctor’s instructions for treatment.