Esophageal Cancer

　　What is esophageal cancer?

　　Esophageal cancer is kind of malignant disease which is formed by paraplasm of any part of tissue cells in esophagus, and is also one of the most common malignant cancers of digestive system, and can easily invade the whole body and spread to other parts in advanced stage.

　　Esophageal cancer can be divided into four types: the most common one is squamous cell which amounts for over 90% and whose carceration change and metastasis process last long, therefore, early detection can permit many ways like surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy to control the condition; other types are very rare, such as adenocarcinoma of esophagus, small cell undifferentiated carcinoma, carcinosarcoma, but have high potential for aggravation.

　　There are about 300 thousands of people died of esophageal cancer each year, among which incidence of male is significantly higher than that of female with proportion rate being 1.1-17:1; the incidence is increasing as age goes by (especially after reaching 35 years old) and stays the lowest before 35 years old; people among 60-69 years old are in high potential for esophageal cancer, however, people should not be over worried about this, and pay attention to early symptoms in timely manner in life and combine advanced technology to treat it effectively. This brings survival hope for patients.

　　What can cause esophageal cancer?

　　The presence of esophageal cancer combines complicated interaction of mixed factors like living habits, physical condition, inherent gene, microelements, however, the prime culprit may go to long term unhealthy living or diet habit.

　　What are the symptoms of esophageal cancer?

　　Early symptoms of esophageal cancer are not obvious. Nearly half of or above patients have spread when they were diagnosed esophageal cancer and there is only 25-40% survival rate after surgery. Therefore, knowing well esophageal cancer is helpful for early detection and improving survival rate as well:

　　1. Foreign substance sensation in the esophagus, choking sense when swallowing;

　　2. Burning, needing or dragging sensation of breast bone when swallowing;

　　3. Impossible feeding and companied with vomiting, upper abdominal pain, weight loss, etc. when swallowing;

　　4. Obvious malnutrition, symtosis, cachexia emerging for long term insufficient feeding during advanced stage, sometimes, some complications like metastasis or oppressing would appear.

　　To one’s attention, the above-mentioned symptoms are not only for esophageal cancer, and may also refer to other diseases. No matter what situation it is, go to standardized hospital for related examination and diagnosis.

　　What methods can be applied for diagnosis?

　　1. Fiberendoscopy: it is widely used for examining digestive tract disease;

　　2. Digestive tract endoscopic ultrasonography: is can detect the depth for the lesion invading the esophageal wall; measure the abnormally enlarged lymph node outside of esophageal wall; localize the position on the esophageal wall for the lesion;

　　3. X-ray barium meal examination: it can detect the lesion position, length as well as obstruction condition, meanwhile it can also confirm if cancer cell has invaded outward field or not;

　　4. CT examination: CT scan can clearly indicate the relation between esophagus and adjacent mediastinum, but can hardly detect early esophageal cancer. Combining CT with X-ray examination is very helpful for diagnosing esophageal cancer and its stage judgement;

　　5. Esophageal exfoliative cytology examination: easy and convenient, causing little pain, it is the prime method for early diagnosis of esophageal cancer.

　　Staging of esophageal cancer

　　Stage 0: early stage esophageal cancer, is also called primary esophageal cancer whose cancer cell is just limited to esophageal cuticular layer with other tissues being normal, and don’t have any malignancy changes or any invasion to other lymph nodes and organs;

　　Stage I: malignant cells have already invaded into other tissues underneath the cuticular layer and emerged in lamina propia or mucous membrane substratum, but have not invaded into the muscle layer. Cancer cells won’t spread to lymph node or other organ in this stage;

　　Stage II: cancer cell have invaded into lymph nodes but not into other organs;

　　Stage III: esophageal cancer has invaded to adjacent tracheas but has not affected to related lymph node; no distant metastasis occur;

　　Stage IV: esophageal cancer has spread to many organs through blood circulation, like liver, bone, or even head and so on.

　　What are the treatment methods?

　　Different stages have important influence on treatment methods and purposes of esophageal cancer. Treatment of early stage of esophageal cancer can control the cancer and prolong life, while, for the advanced stage, treatment can control the condition and prevent recurrence so that improve life quality. Treatment methods can be chosen alone or be integrated as per condition of disease.

　　Surgery: it can remove the tissue comprising tumor and its adjacent lymph nodes, and has obviously therapeutic effect for early stage of esophageal cancer. Pathological staging is the most prognosis factor for esophageal cancer patient survival. For Stage I patient, there is 80-90% survival rate for 5 years after surgery, while there is no more than 15% of 5 years survival rate for these patients whose partial tumor local area have reach advanced stage (Stage III or IV).

　　Radiotherapy: it applies radioactive ray to shrink the tumor before surgery or eliminate residual cancer cells after surgery. If patients are not suitable for surgery, radiotherapy can be chosen as an alternative option for surgery.

　　Chemotherapy: chemotherapy can combine radiotherapy to eliminate cancer cells. To some extent, it can shrink ovarian cancer lesion and tumor scope, but also has certain side effects to the body. Interventional chemotherapy is one of chemotherapy: perfusion chemotherapy through esophageal cancer artery or embolism is usually applicable for the middle or advanced stage esophageal cancer.

　　Photodynamic treatment: in recent years, new photosensitizer and endoscope technology have further improved photodynamic therapy, and made it as commonly used rescue therapy after first-line therapy.

　　TCM can also be provided.

　　After multiple years of research and development, TCM have the function of regulating equilibrium and strengthening body resistance to fight ovarian cancer. If combine TCM with western medicine, the therapeutic effect shall be greatly be improved. Combining TCM with surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, can effectively reduce the toxic reaction caused by radiotherapy as well chemotherapy, and improve patients’ immunity and body resistance to fight cancer, and further improve patients’ living quality and prolong survival period for patients in advanced stage.

　　What kinds of supports can be obtained?

　　Practice proves that the clinic team services composed by multiple disciplines like oncosurgery, oncology, pathology, imageology and anesthesia doctors as well as professional nurses, can provide patients with most effective, most suitable and most economic treatment plan, and also can greatly improve the therapeutic effect of treating cancer patients.

　　“One station” medical system constructed by Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou combining multiple disciplines, can perform comprehensive diagnosis and treatment for patients under the condition of without adding patients’ burden. Therefore, on one hand, it can provide all-round and heartfelt medical services, and on the other hand, it improves medical efficiency and level. There are many channels can be applied to conduct the communication between patients and doctors, like online consultation, email, telephone conversation, and face-to-face consultation. All these consultation services can effectively help patients to fight the cancer. While the medical team faced by the patients includes doctors, nurses, dietitians, interpreters and so on to meet various demands in different level of different countries. Patients would be more confident under the unobstructed communication environment to cooperate the hospital to diagnose and treat the diseases.