Author: Jiang Xiaomeng (Affiliated Hospital of Jiangsu University)
Patients with esophageal cancer may feel discomfort, burning, or pain behind the sternum in the early stages, a foreign body sensation or friction in the chest when swallowing food, and sometimes significant difficulty swallowing.
Some patients may present with hyposkeletal or epigastric discomfort, hiccups, and belching.
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In general, the symptoms of early esophageal cancer are relatively mild and short-lived, sometimes mild and severe, sometimes absent, intermittent time varies in length, and some patients have no symptoms in the early stage.
Esophageal cancer patients in the middle and advanced stages will appear obvious dysphagia, food reflux, pain after swallowing and other problems, dysphagia is a typical symptom of esophageal cancer, at first the symptoms of dysphagia are mild, intermittent, with the progression of the disease, the problem of patients with dysphagia will continue and progressively aggravate, some patients even rice porridge and other liquid foods can not be swallowed normally.
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Some patients also have hematemesis and blood in the stool, and some patients will have hoarseness, mediastinitis, mediastinal abscess, pneumonia, lung abscess, tracheoesophageal fistula, pericarditis, etc.
Patients with severe esophageal cancer or metastases may also experience symptoms such as jaundice, ascites, and coma. When you find that you have these problems, you should go to the hospital for a medical examination as soon as possible.
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