“Difficulty swallowing?”
My father (56 years old) has been complaining about difficulty in swallowing so we did endoscopy and CT and it looked like 1.5 neoplastic so we thought maybe esophagus cancer. The biopsy showed no sign of dysplasia or metaplasia (first biopsy). Then again another biopsy was taken and third and fourth which showed mild dysplasia. The inner tube of the esophagus seems inflamed to 1.5 cm which makes eating difficult. We were give antibiotics for the inflammation and another endoscopy after 3 months. My question could it still esophagus cancer even if the pathology reports doesn't show it?
Male | 56 years old
Complaint duration: 4 months
Medications: Antibiotics
Conditions: Difficulty swallowing
1 Answer
DoctorDoctor
Yes, inflammatory reactions occur with infectious diseases anywhere in the body. That’s a natural response of the body tissue to any infectious invader to the body and with toxic substances. The fact that they order additional biopsies of the esophagus is because they need to see if the treatment with antibiotics helped the infectious process, and the swelling/inflammatory response went away. Also, they need to check for cancer of the esophagus that they present with an inflammatory respond around the cancer area. Neoplastic only means that it is an abnormal growth of cells (non-cancerous and cancerous). When a pathologist receives a specimen, is a biopsy done by the medical doctor who did the procedure. What the pathology reports are based on the biopsy taken out by the Dr. Remember, the pathologist, who is the Dr. of Drs., is the one who tells the diagnosis based on what is submitted by the surgeon who did the biopsy. Thank you.
