Esophagus Cancer Survival

Unfortunately, more often than not, a regime that includes surgery, chemotherapy and radiation is recommended.

Even more unfortunately, the surgery is both extreme and accompanied by a high possibility of life threatening complications, such as septicemia. Even if successful, it also involves a very long period of recovery for most patients.

The normal sequence of events is to prescribe a low-dose course of chemotherapy, which hopefully will kill any cancer cells that have gone wandering off from the actual site of the tumour. Then pre-surgery radiation treatment – also less than otherwise prescribed – is also undertaken in the hope that it will encourage the tumour to retreat a little around the edges, making it easier for the surgeon to remove it from surrounding tissue.

The surgery itself involves cutting the esophagus at the bottom of the throat, disconnecting all connective tissue around it down to the top of the stomach and removing the entire esophagus, hopefully with the esophageal cancer intact. The problem then comes about because the surgeon needs to connect the top of the stomach to the bottom of the throat in order for the patient to be able to eat.

The way this is done is to also disconnect all connective tissue around the stomach and to stretch what is normally a pouch-like organ into a long tube so that it can replace the tube-like esophagus. As you can imagine there are several complications to this procedure simply because the stomach is not designed play this role.

The first problem is that the tissue at the top of the stomach and the tissue at the base of the throat are different tissue and do not knit together easily. Also getting a food-proof seal between the two is essential, otherwise food particles get into the surrounding tissue causing septicemia. Often times a patient will have to go back to surgery several times for repair work before the seal is achieved.

The next problem is that the patient no longer has a stomach pouch, and so has to eat very small portions over a long period of time until a new pouch forms at the base of the tube. Couple this with the fact that normally the sphyncter at the bottom of the esophagus is also removed, and we have another problem – lie down too soon after eating and there is nothing to stop all the food flowing back up into the mouth. This is unpleasant to say the least and dangerous at its worst.

Once the patient is through surgery (and the good news is surgery survival rates are continually improving) a re-assessment is done as to whether further chemo is required.

The main reason we rejected the surgery aspect was that even though Glenn’s tumour was caught fairly early, in comparison to the norm, the surgeon was still only giving him a 50/50 chance of surviving 5 years, and warned us that he could spend up to two of those years simply learning to eat again. Hence, as is detailed in our book, we decided to opt for a nutritional program which not only avoided the nasty aftermath of surgery but also meant his body was not having to heal itself from such invasive and traumatic surgical assault while also trying to fight the cancer itself.

Before making a decision on surgery please see our information on theesophagus cancer survival rate. It may prompt you, as it did us to look for an alternative.

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