Original article: general thoracicPalliative management of malignant airway obstruction
Section snippets
Material and methods
From January 1988 to December 1999, we completed a retrospective review of 121 patients who underwent 378 endoscopic procedures for inoperable, high-grade, malignant airway obstruction. The records of all patients were reviewed for demographics, location and etiology of tumor, method of treatment, immediate results of treatment, long-term survival, and complications. When follow-up or results were in question, living patients and their families were contacted by telephone.
The age of the
Results
Seventy-seven percent (93/121) of patients received either a good or excellent result from their therapy (Table 3). Seventy-two percent (23/32) of patients who received both YAG laser therapy and high-dose radiation received a good to excellent result. The majority of these patients underwent laser therapy first for an exophytic lesion to relieve either dyspnea or hemoptysis, followed by HDR when residual disease was present. The classifications given in this table are those attributed to the
Comment
When a patient with non-small cell bronchogenic carcinoma is initially unresectable, is medically inoperable, or presents with recurrent disease after resection, frequently the most common symptoms are those of major endobronchial obstruction of the trachea or major airways. At other times, symptoms may result from obstructive phenomena at the lobar level. Management of patients with malignant airway obstruction represents a significant therapeutic challenge for all physicians engaged in caring
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