Evaluation of combined argon plasma coagulation and savary bougienage for the relief of dysphagia of esophageal squamous cancer patients in the end of life.

214 Background: To relieve the dysphagia is a critical treatment for advanced esophageal cancer patients' palliative care in their end-of-life. The ideal way is to satisfy both the patient's nutrition supplement and self-taste. Although several endoscopic dilation techniques have been reported, the high incidence of dysphagia quickly relapsing remains. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of Argon Plasma Coagulation (APC) combined with Savary bougienage (SB) and SB alone for the relief of dysphagia of esophageal squamous cancer in the end-of-life.

METHODS: Patients with dysphagia for local advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma or local tumor recurrence and no any radiotherapy or surgery chance were randomly assigned to undergo APC combined with SB or SB alone. Primary endpoints were the dysphagia-free survival (DFS, be defined as the time from first dilation of effectively relieved dysphagia to dysphagia relapse, days) after 3 months followed up.

RESULTS: A total of 60 patients from Cancer Institute, First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Science and Technology were included in the study (SB group, n = 30, Combination group [APC combined with SB], n = 30), 2011. October 1-31, 2015. Primary endpoints: 3 months after treatment, DFS of Combination group (30.63 days; 95% CI, 20.31-36.95) was significantly longer than the SB alone group (5.3 days; 95% CI, 3.01-8.84, P = 0.000). No severe complications occurred within both of two groups.

CONCLUSIONS: APC combined with SB was a safe and well-tolerated method for relieving dysphagia of advanced esophageal squamous cell cancer patients in the end-of-life, more investigation should pay on if this dilation method could obviously improve the life quality of patients and family by questionnaire as well.

CLINICAL TRIAL INFORMATION: ChiCTR-TRC-13003757.