This year, more than 22,000 people will be diagnosed with esophageal cancer and more than 16,000 will lose their battle with the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
April is Esophageal Cancer Awareness Month, and as with most cancers, the best outcomes for patients come with early detection.
“The vast majority of patients with esophageal cancer start to notice that food is getting stuck on its way through the esophagus and into the stomach,” said Director of Thoracic Surgery at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Richard Battafarano.
Battafarano said those symptoms are also usually accompanied by weight loss.
For a small group of people with the disease, they might not experience symptoms and only discover the illness during a routine upper endoscopy.
When the cancer is suspected, Battafarano said patients will go through several tests, among them an endoscopic ultrasound during which a special probe looks to see how deep the cancer has traveled into the wall of the esophagus.
He said CT scans and PET scans are also ordered to see how far the disease has spread.
“To see if the cancer cells have traveled either to lymph nodes nearby, or to places outside of where the esophageal tumor is such as the liver,” Battafarano said.
After the testing is complete, if the patient needs pre-treatment which he said most do, chemotherapy and radiation therapy will take. Those treatments would be followed by surgery to remove the cancer Battafarno said in a video posted by Johns Hopkins.
“I tell patients that is operation for esophageal cancer is one of the biggest operations we do in all of surgery,” Battafarano said.
He said the reason for that is the operation must begin in the upper abdomen and then after that move to the area above the tumor in the esophagus.
“Then the last step of the operation is to bring the remaining portion of the stomach up from the abdomen into the chest and connect it to the cut edge of the esophagus above so the patient will be able to eat again,” Battafarano said.
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