1, What are the symptoms of esophageal cancer
The symptomatic manifestations of esophageal cancer are divided into three parts, early stage and intermediate stage and late stage, which are characterized as follows:
1, Early stage symptom
Symptoms are often inconspicuous, but there may be different degrees of uncomfortable sensations when swallowing hard and coarse food, including the feeling of choking on the food obstruction under the throat. Burning, pins and needles, or pulling and rubbing pain behind the sternum. The passage of food is slow and there is a sensation of stagnation or foreign body sensation. The stagnation is often relieved by swallowing water. Symptoms may be mild or severe and progress slowly.
2. Mid-term symptoms
Typical symptoms of esophageal cancer are progressive difficulty in swallowing, first dry food, then semi-fluid food, and finally water and saliva can not be swallowed. Mucus-like sputum is often spat out, which is the secretion of saliva and esophagus of hypopharynx. The patient gradually loses weight, becomes dehydrated and weak.
3. Advanced Symptoms
The late stage manifests as persistent chest pain or back pain, and the cancer has invaded the tissues outside the esophagus. When the inflammation and edema caused by the cancer obstruction subsides temporarily, or when part of the cancer is detached, the obstruction symptoms may be reduced temporarily, which is often mistaken as improvement of the condition. If the cancer invades the recurrent laryngeal nerve, hoarseness may occur; if it presses the cervical sympathetic ganglion, Horner's syndrome may occur; if it invades the trachea or bronchus, esophageal, tracheal or bronchial fistula may be formed, which may lead to violent choking when swallowing water or food and respiratory system infection. Finally, a malignant state occurs. If there are liver, brain and other organs metastasis, jaundice, abdominal fluid, coma and other states can occur.
2. What should be done for esophageal cancer
For the treatment of mid-stage esophageal cancer, it should still be centered on surgery. Patients in the middle stage have already begun to metastasize to the whole body. For patients who can undergo surgery, surgery should be carried out as early as possible to avoid widespread spreading of the tumor, which will bring difficulty to the treatment. After surgery, patients must undergo consolidation therapy. Many patients think that the treatment is over after surgery, which is very harmful to the treatment of esophageal cancer. Esophageal cancer is a kind of disease with very high malignant degree, and the reason why it is difficult to treat it is that the cancer cells that cannot be completely removed by surgery will appear new foci once they proliferate and grow in the human body, which is what we often call recurrence and metastasis. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy, which prevent recurrence, are the western medical treatments that many patients would choose to receive, and from an objective point of view, these treatments are the treatments with very obvious effects. However, the reason why many patients give up using these treatments is because of their huge side effects.
Esophageal cancer brings not only the torment of disease, but also the heavy economic burden to patients, so it is recommended that friends should pay attention to the prevention of esophageal cancer in their daily life. There are many ways to prevent esophageal cancer, and the most common treatment is to develop good living habits, standardize one's diet, and the diet needs to be lighter.