Outcomes of Airway Stents in the Palliative Care of Patients With Cancer

A significant proportion of patients with advanced primary or metastatic intrathoracic malignancy will eventually develop central airway obstruction. The morbidity associated with malignant airway obstruction (MAO) is considerable and the management is difficult. Our aim was to evaluate the outcomes of tracheobronchial stenting in patients with MAO and its role in palliative care.

This retrospective study involved a consecutive case series of patients with advanced cancer with MAO who underwent tracheobronchial stenting between August 2014 and August 2019. The European Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) scale was used to evaluate patient functional status before and after tracheobronchial stenting. Univariate survival analysis included Kaplan-Meier curves with Log-Rank test, while Cox regression was used as a multivariate analysis.

We included 28 patients with median age of 55.0 years (interquartile range = 49.3-66.5) and 89.3% male. The most frequent primary tumour was the esophagus followed by lungs. The majority of the patients (75%) expressed immediate symptom relief after stenting and there was a significant improvement in the mean ECOG performance status (PS; P = .005). There was no intraprocedure mortality and complications were observed in 6 patients. The median survival after airway stenting was 39.0 days (95% CI = 32.2-45.8) with poorer PS after stent insertion associated with lower overall survival (hazard ratio = 2.3 [95% CI = 1.1-4.9], P = .030) on multivariate analysis.

Airway stent is a safe and effective procedure that offers rapid palliation of symptoms with no major complications. Therefore, stent placement should be considered as part of the treatment of patients with terminal cancer.