We thank Mavrogenis *et al.* [ @JR619-1] for their interest in our publication [@JR619-2], and their remarks on our published paper.  We realize that there are novel techniques continuously being developed for the treatment of complete esophageal obstruction (CEO), including our dissection technique, Per-Oral Endoscopic Tunneling for Restoration of the Esophagus (POETRE) [@JR619-3] referenced in our paper [@JR619-2].  We congratulate the authors on their recent description of a successful technique using endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) for CEO.  Unfortunately our manuscript [@JR619-2] was submitted for publication around the same time that the report from Mavrogenis and colleagues was published online [@JR619-1] and hence it was not included in our references.  The omission was not intentional, and was due to the timing of submission of our manuscript. 

**Competing interests:** None
