Original article: general thoracicDouble stenting for esophageal and tracheobronchial stenoses
Section snippets
Material and methods
From 1991 to 1999, we performed stent therapy for 28 patients with esophageal stenoses and 45 patients with tracheobronchial stenoses. Of these, 8 patients received stent therapy for both esophageal and tracheobronchial stenoses (Table 1). The causes of the stenoses were esophageal cancer in 7 patients and lung cancer in 1. The mean length of esophageal stenoses in the esophageal cancer patients was 5.7 cm (range: 3–9). The sites of airway stenoses were the trachea in 5 patients, the left main
Results
Immediate improvement of grades of both respiratory symptoms and dysphagia was achieved in all patients after stent placements (Table 2). The symptoms of tracheobronchial stenoses did not recur in any of our cases until the patients’ death. The symptoms of esophagotracheobronchial fistulae also improved after the placement of esophageal covered metallic stent. The mean period of taking meals without the nutritional support after esophageal stent placements was 5 months (range, from 2–16
Comment
Although our study showed that double stenting for esophageal and tracheobronchial stenoses effectively relieved symptoms, we discovered 2 main complications: (1) in patients with both esophageal and tracheal stenoses, the tracheal stenoses can deteriorate if they are compressed by the esophageal stents; and (2) with double stents, there is a high risk of fistula occurring or growing because of necrosis of both the esophageal and tracheobronchial walls from the pressure of the stents.
Two of our
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2018, Materials Today ChemistryCitation Excerpt :Stents are a class of biomedical implants used within the body to reopen narrowed or obstructed passageways in the vasculature, esophagus, and gastrointestinal tract [1–5].