Grandpa Li, a retired cadre from Yancheng City, is 88 years old and unfortunately suffered from pancreatic cancer four years ago. His family took chemotherapy instead of surgery in consideration of his old age and weak constitution. Two months ago, Grandpa Li started to have difficulty in eating, which gradually developed into difficulty in swallowing water, resulting in nutritional deficiency, weight loss of 10 kg in a short period of time, pale lips and severe anemia. In order to improve eating, increase nutrition and improve the quality of life, the old man had an esophageal stent placed in a local tertiary hospital in the hope of improving his eating condition. After the stent was placed, the old man kept feeling pain in his upper abdomen, vomiting violently, unable to eat, and losing weight day by day, maintained only by rehydration and nutrition, and suffering a lot! The local doctors adjusted the stent several times for nearly a month, but the stent had been embedded in the mucosa of the esophagus, and the local doctors could not handle it further. With no choice, the old man’s children found out through friends and relatives that Professor Shi Ruihua, the director of the Department of Gastroenterology of Zhongda Hospital of Southeast University, was an expert in stent treatment, so they took the old man to Professor Shi Ruihua for treatment with the attitude of giving it a try. The nationally renowned gastrointestinal endoscopist sympathized with the old man when he saw that he was suffering from the disease and was sad and in pain. Through adequate preoperative examination, an endoscopic examination was conducted the next day, and it was found that a large part of the previously placed stent had been covered by mucosa, and the stent had no anti-reflux function, and the lower end had topped the gastric wall of the cardia. Professor Shi decided to remove the stent as much as possible to relieve the old man’s pain, and then replace it with a new anti-reflux stent with skirt. After obtaining the consent of the family and the elderly through full communication with the family, Professor Shi used a skillful and gentle technique to successfully detach and remove the stent, and the elderly did not feel any pain during the whole process. Considering that the old man had advanced pancreatic cancer and there was a possibility of re-occurrence of obstruction, Prof. Shi repositioned a new anti-reflux stent with a skirt, which was easy to remove and the anti-reflux could prevent vomiting and burning sensation behind the sternum after the stent was placed. After the new stent was placed, the old man’s previous pain disappeared, no more vomiting occurred, and he was able to eat liquid after one hour and semi-liquid on the same day. The old man was all smiles, and his children were also very happy and kept praising Prof. Shi’s excellent medical skills with thumbs up! The mysterious new esophageal stent placed in Grandpa Li’s new body is called “Nickel-Titanium Memory Alloy Fully Overlaid Ultra-portable Retrievable Esophageal Stent”, which was designed and developed by his team led by Prof. Shi Ruihua and has been certified as a utility model patent by the State Intellectual Property Office. The silicone membrane of this new esophageal stent is 5~10mm beyond the upper mouth of the stent to form a skirt structure, which can effectively relieve the pressure of the stent on the esophageal wall and reduce the shearing force, overcome the defects of the common full laminated esophageal stent, effectively avoid the proliferation of granulation tissue or excessive growth of tumor tissue at both ends of the stent, prevent the restenosis of the upper mouth of the stent, and make it easier to remove (the removal time only takes about 2~3 minutes). It avoids the pain of major surgery due to the difficulty of removing the stent from the embedded wall and eliminates the hidden danger of re-infarction. After the new esophageal stent was put into clinical use, the “battle” between the new esophageal stent and the common stent (nickel-titanium alloy fully-coated retrievable stent) began! Researchers followed and statistically analyzed the “battle” between two groups of patients with different stents. In the first round, the researchers looked at the granulation of the stent epithelium after 1 and 2 months of stent placement in both groups, and the total proliferation rate of the normal stent was 100%, while the total proliferation rate of the new stent was only 8.6%. The new stent won! In the second round, the researchers looked at the restenosis rate of the esophagus one month after stent placement in both groups of patients, and the restenosis rate was 16.7 percent for the normal stent and 0 percent for the new stent! ”My further research idea is to develop a biodegradable stent, prepared with biodegradable biomaterials, which can degrade by itself in the body and does not require multiple endoscopic interventions, so that millions of patients like Grandpa Li can practically feel the benefits of the rapid development of medical technology.”