China has become a country with high incidence of esophageal cancer. Esophageal cancer is a malignant tumor that occurs in the epithelial tissue of esophagus, accounting for 2% of all malignant tumors. The age of onset is mostly above 40 years old, and there are more men than women. The exact cause is not well understood and needs to be researched and studied. Difficulty in swallowing, dry cough, hoarseness, foreign body sensation in esophagus, etc. To understand and pay attention to the early symptoms of esophageal cancer, it is important to treat and cure esophageal cancer thoroughly. If you have the above symptoms and they persist for a long time, you are recommended to go to hospital immediately for examination and early detection and treatment. What are the symptoms of early, middle and late stage esophageal cancer? 1. Early typical symptoms of esophageal cancer – dry throat: The most common is choking sensation in the throat, which can disappear or recur spontaneously and does not affect eating. It often occurs when the patient’s mood fluctuates, so it is easily mistaken for functional symptoms. Posterior sternal and subxiphoid pain is more common. It can be burning, stabbing or pulling in nature, and is characterized by swallowing rough, burning or irritating food. The dryness and tightness of throat is especially obvious when swallowing dry and rough food, and the occurrence of this symptom is often related to the emotional fluctuations of patients. 2.Progressive dysphagia, a typical symptom of middle stage esophageal cancer: The main symptom of middle stage esophageal cancer is progressive dysphagia, but there are about 10% of cases without these symptoms. The initial symptoms are not dysphagia, which accounts for 20% to 40%. Because the esophageal wall has good elasticity and expansion ability, when the cancer does not involve more than half of the whole circumference of the esophagus, the symptoms of dysphagia are not significant yet. The degree of dysphagia is related to the pathological type, and the constricted type and medullary type are more severe than others. There is no certain relationship between the degree of dysphagia and tumor size, surgical resection rate and survival rate, etc. 3.Typical symptoms of esophageal cancer in late stage – hoarseness: When the cancer presses the recurrent laryngeal nerve, it may cause hoarseness; invasion of phrenic nerve may cause eruption or phrenic nerve paralysis; compression of trachea or bronchus may cause shortness of breath and dry cough; erosion of aorta may produce fatal bleeding. If the cancer is located in the upper part of the esophagus or esophagobronchial fistula, cervical sympathetic nerve palsy is often produced when swallowing liquid. In the late stage, the patient may have difficulty in swallowing. In addition, the patient may suffer from malnutrition due to difficulty in eating and may develop signs such as wasting, anemia or cachexia. Minimally invasive thoracoscopic surgery for early stage esophageal cancer 1.Surgical method: Minimally invasive small incision method, i.e. TV thoracoscopic treatment for esophageal cancer. To do esophageal cancer surgery with thoracoscopy, only three small holes, each of 1.5 cm, need to be made in the chest wall during the operation, which can meet the aesthetic needs of modern people, without cutting the muscles and sternum, and the postoperative pain is light. Although the chest incision is small, with the aid of thoracoscopic magnification, separating the tissues around the esophagus can obtain a better view than conventional open chest, and the hand-assisted ultrasonic knife cuts the esophageal fibrous strips and nutrient vessels without ligation, so the operation is safer and faster. 2.Surgical features: minimally invasive small incision surgery under complete thoracoscopy, the length of the surgical access incision is 6-10cm, compared with traditional open chest surgery, the main feature is that the incision is located in a relatively hidden part of the chest, which has the advantages of beautiful, small trauma, less bleeding, fast recovery, good healing, relatively less cost, etc.