[Palliative treatment of esophageal carcinoma. Personal surgical experience]

Malignant tumours of the oesophagus cannot always be handled radically; in personal clinical experience, only a third of patients suffering from oesophageal carcinoma have been subjected to radical oesophagectomy. The purpose of palliative treatment is to suppress dysphagia and restore possibly natural, adequate feeding. As for techniques, intraluminal catheterization by the combined endoscopic and gastrotomic route has been personally preferred to surgical bypass and gastrostomy whose palliative value should be confined to cases in which no other technique can be used. Good results have been obtained with catheterization and patients have been able to feed themselves naturally without noting the ineluctability of their disease.