[Palliative care for patients with oesophageal cancer]

Palliative therapy for patients with incurable oesophageal cancer necessitates a broad spectrum of different measures to relieve symptoms.

Surgical procedures (palliative tumour resections, bypass surgery) are rarely indicated on account of the high morbidity. Preeminent treatment options to eliminate dysphagia and to ensure food passage are endoscopic procedures, in particular, the endoscopically or radiologically guided stent implantation. In case of failure, a percutaneous feeding tube and general palliative measures are required. Furthermore tumour-specific therapies (brachytherapy, radiochemotherapy, chemotherapy) are applied.

The choice of the procedure is based on the symptoms, the tumour situation, the patients' general status, and their preferences. If possible, an individual, interdisciplinary treatment concept for each patient should be designed and modified according to the course of the disease.

It should be the aim of future studies to elucidate the optimal combination of a merely symptomatic treatment with tumour-specific measures under the aspect of the achievable quality of life.