Henan Provincial People’s Hospital successfully treated a rare elderly patient with congenital esophageal stenosis
“I can finally have a painful meal! It used to take me 80 to 90 minutes to eat a bowl of noodles, but now I can finish it in 20 minutes. Thanks to our provincial people’s hospital!” Li Tianxiao, Department of Interventional Medicine, Henan Provincial People’s Hospital
Recently, the Interventional Department of Henan Provincial People’s Hospital successfully performed surgery for a rare elderly patient with congenital esophageal stenosis.
A lifetime of hardship, just want to eat a meal in pain
The patient, Zhao Lao Han, is 76 years old. Since he was born, he vomited when he ate milk, not to mention eating other foods. His relatives and friends all thought he had a strange disease and could not feed himself, and advised his mother to give up on him. Despite the hardship, his mother could not bear to abandon her child, so she fed him with milk little by little, feeding him and throwing up, and then feeding him again after throwing up. Slowly grow up a little bit and switch to a liquid food like rice soup.
To the surprise of everyone, Zhao Lao Han survived strongly and became the production leader, and also received a “special” treatment: into the people’s canteen to eat without waiting in line, with the arrival of the food. Even so, it took him a long time to eat each meal, as short as an hour or more, or as long as three hours. Only a little chewed, with soup slowly sent down, from time to time also have to spit out. As a result, Zhao Lao Han is often the first to go to the canteen to eat, waiting for workers to clean up the dishes have not finished eating ……
Because of this strange disease, at first Zhao Lao Han has not been able to find a daughter-in-law, very distressed, also went to the hospital to see the doctor, but due to the limited medical conditions at the time, can not treat such diseases. Later, when he was almost 30 years old, he could barely get married, but he still had trouble eating, and in this way he reached the age of 76.
Balloon dilatation finally fulfilled the old man’s dream of eating
The hospital carefully reviewed Zhao’s data, combined with the examination results, the initial diagnosis of “congenital esophageal stenosis”, and by the interventional department director Li Tianxiao in the department consultation discussion confirmed the diagnosis, and jointly agreed on a treatment plan, decided to use balloon dilation.
With the cooperation of Mr. Zhao, two dilatations were performed within one week, which successfully relieved the patient’s pain. Currently, Mr. Zhao is recovering well and has not experienced any recurrence.
According to Director Li Tianxiao, congenital esophageal stenosis is very rare in clinical practice. As of 1995, only 500 cases were reported worldwide and more than 10 cases were reported in China. Most of these patients develop at an early age and show choking and coughing after birth, slow sucking and overflowing of breast milk, with a high chance of aspiration pneumonia and a low survival rate of children. In the past, the use of probes for rigid dilatation or surgical treatment was often used, which was very traumatic, had many complications, and was very painful for patients. The interventional technique uses balloons of varying diameters, which are inserted orally into the patient’s esophageal stenosis in a progressive manner from small to large, and the stenosis is gradually dilated by injecting water into the balloon. The balloon is very soft, which greatly reduces the pain of the patient’s treatment.
So far, the interventional department of Henan Provincial People’s Hospital has successfully treated 4 cases of congenital esophageal stenosis, the youngest of which was 2 years old, but it is very rare to find a patient as old as Zhao in the literature.