Esophageal pain when eating, early symptoms of esophageal cancer are usually not obvious, in many cases, they are more similar to chronic pharyngitis. Middle-aged and elderly people should be alert enough when they have persistent swallowing of coarse and hard food, and it is better to go to regular professional hospitals for timely diagnosis in order to detect esophageal cancer in time. Early symptoms of esophageal cancer are often not obvious, but of course, this is not absolute. When swallowing hard and coarse food, there may be some degree of discomfort, and common symptoms include choking sensation of swallowing food, burning, stabbing or pulling and rubbing pain behind the sternum. Early symptoms of esophageal cancer are generally mild and heavy at times and progress slowly, so it is easy to be ignored by patients. 2.Middle and late stage The symptoms of middle and late stage esophageal cancer will gradually start to be obvious, and the relatively typical symptom is progressive difficulty in swallowing, firstly, it is difficult to swallow dry food, then semi-liquid food, and finally, water and saliva cannot be swallowed. Patients with esophageal cancer in this period should be vigilant enough to know that the cure rate of middle and late stage esophageal cancer is quite low, besides, patients with esophageal cancer in this period will also have metastasis. For esophageal cancer, progressive dysphagia is the main symptom of most patients when they visit the doctor, but it should be noted that this is the late manifestation of esophageal cancer disease. The main reason is that because of the elasticity and expansion ability of esophageal wall, dysphagia occurs only when about 2/3 of the circumference of esophagus is infiltrated by cancer.