In the current era of growing health concerns, cancer is one of the most significant medical hazards yet to gain a curable treatment. As the name suggests, oesophageal cancer occurs in the oesophagus, a long, hollow tube running from your throat to your stomach. As this organ helps you swallow and digest your food, this type of cancer can be severe and life-threatening.
Have you come across anyone with this cancer and wish to know more about it? Then, you are at the right place! This article will help you learn about this cancer's types, symptoms, stages, and treatment.
The oesophagus’ wall comprises several layers of tissues, such as mucous membrane, muscle, and connective tissue. Oesophageal cancer starts developing in the inner line of the oesophagus and then spreads to the outer layer as these cancer cells grow.
Thus, if you wonder what oesophageal cancer is, it refers to cancer resulting in abnormal cells growing in the oesophageal tissue. When these cells grow out of control, they form a tumour in these tissues.
Generally, there are three common types of oesophageal cancer. These are as follows.
To learn more about this cancer, you should find out the symptoms of oesophageal cancer. These symptoms usually start showing after a considerable period, making it difficult to diagnose this cancer at its early stages.
However, if you have any of the following symptoms, you should consider visiting a healthcare centre.
Medical researchers are not yet clear about the exact causes of oesophageal cancer. However, the following risk factors often play a part in developing this cancer.
Now that you have a basic idea of this disease, you might be curious to learn the staging procedure of oesophageal cancer. Medical researchers have divided the growth of this cancer into the following five stages.
|
Stages |
Condition |
|
Stage 0 |
Abnormal non-cancerous cells are found only in the layer of cells lining the oesophagus. |
|
Stage 1 |
Cancer cells are found only in the outer layer of the oesophagus. |
|
Stage 2 |
Cancer reaches the outer wall of the oesophagus, and it may have spread to 1 to 2 nearby lymph nodes. |
|
Stage 3 |
Cancer reaches deeper into the inner muscle layer and spreads beyond the oesophagus into surrounding organs and/or more lymph. |
|
Stage 4 |
Stage 4 of oesophageal cancer is the most advanced one, where cancer spreads to other organs in the body and/or to lymph nodes far from the oesophagus. |
While anyone can be at risk of developing oesophageal cancer, tobacco users stand a higher chance of getting it. This particularly concerns people who regularly chew tobacco and smoke cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Moreover, people with a family history of this cancer are also at a higher risk of getting it in future.
After knowing all the significant facets of this disease, you must be wondering, "how to treat oesophageal cancer?” According to healthcare professionals, there are high chances of curing this cancer if diagnosed early. However, there are low survival rates if you are diagnosed in the final stages of oesophageal cancer.
Therefore, healthcare professionals use the following treatment procedures for treating this cancer.
A surgery or oesophagectomy is the most common treatment for oesophageal cancer. Doctors use it to remove some parts of your oesophagus and some tissues around it. Furthermore, they can also remove some lymph nodes and check if they contain cancerous cells. If cancer has not spread beyond the oesophagus, surgery can cure it completely.
It refers to using high-energy X-rays or radioactive substances for curing cancer. Using a beam of radiation aimed at the tumour can kill the cancer cells in your body. Radiation interferes with the growth of cancer cells, thereby destroying them. Moreover, these can also be used after surgery for killing any remaining cancerous cells.
With this, doctors use medicines to kill or stop the growth of cancer cells. While these medicines are usually transmitted directly into the bloodstream through a vein (intravenous), patients can also take these in the form of pills. This therapy is often used before surgery to shrink the tumour and control its symptoms.
This therapy helps treat advanced tumours that block the oesophagus. Doctors use lasers to cut a hole in the blockage. It enables the patients to eat with improved swallowing.
These procedures help treat early tumours. Doctors use endoscopy to remove these tumours from the body without having to remove the oesophagus.
This therapy is a new treatment for oesophageal cancer, which uses photoactive drugs (drugs activated by non-thermal light). When cancer cells absorb these drugs, they destroy them inside the body. As a result, doctors can remove various symptoms of this cancer with this therapy, particularly the problems with swallowing food.
While there are no particular means of preventing oesophageal cancer, medical researchers have given some ways of reducing the risks of getting this cancer. The following section described this.
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