How much progress have we made?: a 20-year experience regarding esophageal stents for the palliation of malignant dysphagia.

Esophageal stents are widely used for the palliation of malignant esophageal obstruction. Advances in technology have made esophageal stenting technically feasible and widespread for such obstruction, but complications remain frequent. We present outcomes of a large cohort undergoing esophageal stent placement for malignant esophageal obstruction at a tertiary care cancer center. Patients who underwent placement of esophageal stents for malignancy-related esophageal obstruction between 1 January 2001 and 31 July 2020 were identified. Exclusion criteria included stents placed for benign stricture, fistulae, obstruction of proximal esophagus (proximal to 24 cm from incisors), or post-surgical indications. Patient charts were reviewed for demographics, procedure and stent characteristics, complications, and follow-up. A total of 242 patients underwent stent placement (median age: 64 years, 79.8% male). The majority, 204 (84.3%), had esophageal cancer. During the last two decades, there has been an increasing trend in the number of esophageal stents placed. Though plastic stents were previously used, these are no longer utilized. Complications are frequent and include early complications of pain in 68 (28.1%) and migration in 21 (8.7%) and delayed complications of recurrent symptoms of dysphagia in 46 (19.0%) and migration in 26 (10.7%). Over the study period, there has not been a significant improvement in the rate of complications. During follow-up, 92 (38%) patients required other enteral nutrition modalities after esophageal stent placement. No patient, treatment, or stent characteristics were significantly associated with stent complication or outcome. Esophageal stent placement is an increasingly popular method for palliation of malignant dysphagia. However, complications, particularly pain, migration, and recurrent symptoms of dysphagia are common. Almost 40% of patients may also require other methods of enteral access after esophageal stent placement. Given the high complication rates and suboptimal outcomes, removable stents should be considered as first-line in the case of poor palliative response.

Successful treatment of distal intestinal obstruction syndrome with N-acetylcysteine and polyethylene glycol via colonoscopy.

We describe a case of a 46-year-old woman with cystic fibrosis who presented with several days of abdominal pain and distension. She was found to have a small bowel obstruction with inspissated stool in the distal ileum on CT imaging. Despite initial management with conservative measures, her symptoms worsened. She was taken for urgent colonoscopy with administration of 4% N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) at the distal ileum with resultant dissolution of the fecalith. Over the following days, her symptoms improved, and she was discharged with outpatient follow-up.

A decade's experience of managing suspected pancreatic adenocarcinoma at a tertiary cancer center.

Background: We present our experience and established management strategy for endoscopic ultrasonography-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) in diagnosing suspected pancreatic neoplasms at a tertiary referral cancer hospital. Method: Relevant data were extracted from our database for patients who underwent EUS-FNA for suspected pancreatic neoplasms at our institution between 2007 and 2016. Results: Among the 309 patients, the median age was 67 years and 56% were men. The most common presenting symptoms were abdominal pain (37%) and jaundice (29%). Concordance between radiographic diagnosis and final pathology was 89%. The mean lesion size was 34.9 mm on computed tomography and 31.5 mm on EUS. There were 197 patients (64%) with localized disease, of whom 115 (58%) had resectable lesions, 61 (31%) had borderline resectable, and 21 (11%) had unresectable lesions (mean CA 19-9 levels 1705 U/mL, 2490 U/mL, and 479 U/mL, respectively). A median of 3 FNA passes were performed to establish a pathologic diagnosis. Two patients (1%) had postprocedural adverse events. Median overall survival was 47 months in those who underwent surgery after EUS and 12 months in those who did not (P<0.001). Conclusions: A multidisciplinary approach is employed for management of suspected pancreatic neoplasm at our tertiary cancer center. A combination of cross-sectional imaging and EUS-FNA serves as a highly effective duo in establishing a tissue diagnosis and staging with a low adverse event rate. Counterintuitively, CA 19-9 is not necessarily higher with resectable lesions than with unresectable lesions, indicating the limitation of CA 19-9 as a pancreatic tumor marker.