Pattern of admission and management outcome of esophageal Cancer patients visited JMC: a 5-year retrospective study

Abstract

Background: Esophageal cancer is the sixth most common causes of cancer-related mortality world-wide. Esophagectomy remains the primary treatment for early-stage esophageal cancer. To date, there is strong evidence to consider that locally advanced cancers should be recommended for a multimodal treatment with a neoadjuvant chemotherapy or a combined chemoradiotherapy (CRT) followed by surgery. Objective:To Analyze Pattern of admission and Management Outcome of Esophageal Cancer patients visited JMC from September 2017-August 2022. Methods:Institutional-based cross sectional study carried out among all esophageal cancer patients visited JMC during the study period,which starts from September 2017-August 2022, Jimma zone, Oromia region, Ethiopia.; Data was collected by using a pre-structured questionnaire,using an electronic data collector (Kobotoolbox) and transferred to, cleaned, and analyzed using SPSS® Statistics, version 27 for Windows. Descriptive statistics was conducted using frequencies and descriptives. The Pearson, and Spearman correlation analysis was used for statistically analyzing the relation between outcome of esophageal cancer management and other factors.A total of 52 patients’ charts were selected for this study. The overall age of the study population ranges from 35 to 68 years (mean age of 54.5 years).From the study population, the majority (n=29; 55.8%) of the patients were females and the males accounts for (n=23; 44.2%).The most common histologic type is squamous cell carcinoma(n=29;55.7%),and adenocarcinoma(n=5;9.6%).The result shows that majority of the patients are those with stage 4(n=34;65.4%) and stage 3(n=18;34.6%).The commonest type of definitive surgery done for the study population is Trans-hiatal esophagectomy(n=17;32.7%),followed by Ivor-Lewis esophagectomy(n=2;3.8%),and McKeown esophagectomy(n=1;1.9%).With regards to the survival of the study group,the maximum survival duration is 6 months,and the minimum is 1 month. Conclusion and recommendation:This study shows that patients diagnosed with esophageal cancer have a very low survival rate which indicates early diagnosis and timely initiation of the available treatment options are essential to improve survival of patients with esophageal cancer. Hence, improvements in cancer control programs, including screening, prevention, timely initiation of available treatment, and establishment of comprehensive cancer registry are recommended.In addition,full documentation and appropriate handling of patients’ charts should be kept in mind. Huge number of losses in patient charts should be taken seriously and appropriate,and timely solution should be given.