In advanced esophageal cancer, the tumor has metastasized distantly, and you often cannot achieve radical cure with surgery or radiation therapy. At this point, improving your quality of life and maximizing your life is the most important thing.
Advanced radiation therapy may improve discomfort
Advanced esophageal cancer is often accompanied by severe esophageal obstruction, dysphagia manifestations, inability to eat and drink. The inability to eat or intake of nutrients to meet the body’s needs makes malnutrition common among patients, which has the most serious impact on quality of life.
In such cases, radiotherapy targeting the lesions of advanced esophageal cancer can locally shrink the mass, reduce the symptoms of dysphagia, improve eating, improve quality of life, and extend life to some extent.
In addition, some advanced patients develop bone metastases and brain metastases, causing bone pain or headaches in the metastatic area, and systemic treatment modalities such as chemotherapy are difficult to reduce these symptoms. At this point, radiation therapy becomes an important way to improve cancer pain and further improve quality of life.
So, even though your disease may no longer be curable, your doctor may recommend radiation therapy. This type of radiation therapy for patients with advanced disease and primarily to improve quality of life is commonly referred to clinically as “palliative radiation therapy.
Palliative radiotherapy itself does not extend life, but rather addresses quality-of-life issues. After all, it is the second principle of treatment (the first principle is life extension) to make the patient less unnecessarily distressed.
Palliative radiotherapy also requires regular review
After palliative radiotherapy, although the tumor is not cured, the growth trend is controlled and the disease enters a period of stabilization where you do not need to receive other treatments for a while and are monitored regularly. The current reasonable observation period is to review every 3 to 4 months.
If the disease progresses again after a period of palliative radiotherapy, then you will have to go back to second-line treatment, such as intervention, radiofrequency, particle implantation, stenting, etc.
Because palliative care itself is for patients with advanced disease that cannot be cured, patients often enter the terminal phase after re-progression. The family can make him/her comfortable by taking good care of him/her, receiving hospice care, etc.
To learn about home care or hospice care for advanced esophageal cancer, read:
Co-written by: Dr. Rong Yu Dr. Jing You, Peking University Cancer Hospital