[The ND-Yag laser in the treatment of non-resectable esophageal neoplasms: evaluation and results]

The Authors show a set of 9 cases of patients suffering from oesophagus flaky carcinoma, judged radically non-operable, and treated with endoscopic laser-therapy. They illustrate the patients' main clinical data, method followed, complications observed and results obtained. What seems to emerge from the analysis of the data is: the effectiveness of laser-therapy in the control of disphagia, simplicity of the technique and its acceptability by the patient, as well as the rareness of complications. Three are the clinical parameters used for the checking of patients before and after the laser treatment: disphagia, odynophagia and thoracic ache. The intenseness of symptoms was classed from 0 up to 3. Before the treatment, six patients out of nine showed class 3 disphagia; after the treatment, two could assume fluids (class 2), two fed also on minced foods (class 1), and two fed normally; in the two cases with initial class 2 disphagia a normal feed could be adopted; in one case no initial disphagia was present. Odynophagia was initially present in one case only at class 3, in three cases at class 1, and in all the other cases it was absent (0). After the treatment, odynophagia disappeared totally, except in one class 1 case, which remained unchanged. The presence of thoracic ache before the treatment was class 1 in four cases, class 3 in one case, and absent in four cases. After the treatment, the class 3 ache turned into class 1: in one class 1 case it was not modified; in the remaining cases the ache, if present, disappeared. Some questions remain opened, concerning the effect on survival, even in relation to other palliative methods, to the duration of the palliation obtained and to the eventual associability of lasertherapy to radiotherapy