How is esophageal cancer treated?
There are many different ways to treat esophageal cancer. Often two or more kinds of treatment will be used together. • Surgery: You may need surgery depending on the stage of your cancer. Part of your esophagus may be removed. You may also need to have some lymph nodes taken out. This may help stop the cancer from spreading to other parts of your body. • Biologic therapy for cancer: Biologic therapy is medicine given to help your body fight growing cancer cells. It may also make cancer cells weaker and easier to kill. You may need this medicine more than once. You may feel like you have the flu during this therapy. • Chemotherapy: • This medicine, often called chemo, is used to treat cancer. It works by killing tumor cells. Chemotherapy may also be used to shrink lymph nodes that have cancer in them. Once the tumor is smaller, you may need surgery to cut out the rest of the cancer. • Many different chemotherapy medicines are used to treat cancer. You may need blood tests often. These
Treatment of esophageal cancer depends upon stage of the disease and the general physical condition of the patient. Treatment decision is often taken by a specialist team, which often includes an oncologist, surgeon and radiation oncologist. Treatment of early stage of esophageal cancer Early stages of esophageal cancer is often treated with surgery, however in many instances a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy is given prior to surgery to optimize the benefit of surgical therapy. In this situation the chemotherapy is usually given at the same time as radiation therapy. The most common chemotherapy used for this purpose is a combination of combination of cisplatin and flurouracil (5-FU). After about two months of chemotherapy and radiation patient is evaluated for surgery. Surgery for esophageal cancer Surgery for esophageal cancer involves removal of the part of esophagus that is involved with cancer and joining the uninvolved part with stomach. The lymph nodes in the area
The treatment of any cancer depends in part on the stage of cancer at the time it is diagnosed. Other considerations include the overall condition of the patient and specific symptoms the patient is having. Most cancers of the esophagus are diagnosed at a relatively late stage because symptoms of swallowing difficulty don’t begin until many months after the cancer begins to grow. For patients in whom the cancer has not spread to other organs, and thus is potentially curable, surgery to remove the majority of the esophagus is the main form of therapy. Many patients also receive chemotherapy (intravenous drug therapy) and radiotherapy (x-ray treatments) after surgery although there is little information to prove that these additional treatments are useful. Many cancers centers are investigating the usefulness of giving chemotherapy or chemotherapy combined with radiotherapy prior to surgery for patients who are potentially curable. For patients who are found to have cancer spread to othe
