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. 2022 Feb;54(1):45-49.
doi: 10.5152/eurasianjmed.2022.21127.

The Relationship Between Achalasia and Esophageal Cancer: The Experience of a Tertiary Center

Ömer Öztürk  1 , Mustafa Kaplan  2 , İlyas Tenlik  1 , Volkan Gökbulut  1 , Derya Arı  1 , Yasemin Özin  1
Affiliations

The Relationship Between Achalasia and Esophageal Cancer: The Experience of a Tertiary Center

Ömer Öztürk et al. Eurasian J Med. 2022 Feb.

Abstract

Objective: We examined the prevalence of esophageal cancer in 828 patients diagnosed with achalasia and the characteristics of patients who developed esophageal cancer.

Material and methods: The demographic characteristics and medical records of the patients who were followed up with a diagnosis of achalasia between 1995 and 2019 were investigated from the patient files.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 51 ± 17.3, 390 of them were males (47.1%) and 438 were females (52.9%). The mean diagnosis age of the patients was 45.4 years. The median follow-up duration of the patients was 73 months (12-480). Esophageal cancer developed in 5 patients (0.6%) during follow-up. Three of these 5 patients had squamous cell carcinoma (60%) and 2 had adenocarcinoma (40%). Three of these patients were males (60%) and 2 were females (40%). The mean age of the patients was 68 (56-78), and cancer developed after a median of 156 months (24-216) after the achalasia diagnosis. Balloon dilation therapy was performed for the treatment of achalasia in all 5 patients who developed esophageal cancer.

Conclusion: Achalasia patients have an increased risk of developing esophageal cancer compared to the general population, and patients should be followed closely for cancer development.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Financial Disclosure: The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.

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