How can patients with esophageal cancer improve their quality of life

Whether it is early stage of esophageal cancer, which has been cured through a series of comprehensive treatment measures such as surgery, or late stage when it is discovered and cannot be cured, there is a problem of recuperation. The saying "three parts treatment and seven parts care" is the truth.

1. Improving the quality of life is the consensus of anti-cancer experts

We know that the current level of medicine is still limited. Cancer may be cured in the early stages, but once it reaches the late stages, the cure rate is very low. There are a few malignant tumors that can be cured even in the late stages, but esophageal cancer is not one of them. For incurable late-stage cancer, there is now a consensus in the medical community around the world that quality of life is the most important!

2. What is quality of life?

Quality of life is the same as "quality of life" in English, or QOL for short. In fact, QOL assessment and related research are not the exclusive domain of cancer experts. Many experts in other disease fields also study this issue. There are many QOL scales specifically used to assess quality of life in use in countries around the world.

3. What factors determine the quality of life?

There are many aspects to evaluate the quality of life, including: appetite and eating, mental and psychological state, sleep quality, fatigue, severity of pain, understanding and cooperation of family members, understanding and cooperation of colleagues (including superiors or leaders), the patient's own understanding of cancer, the patient's attitude towards various treatment measures, the ability to be independent in daily life, etc.

Regardless of the type of cancer a patient has, they will almost all have some loss of appetite due to various reasons, and this is more prominent in esophageal cancer. The appetite mentioned here includes both the subjective unwillingness to eat and the objective inability to eat. Different cancers involve different aspects, but esophageal cancer happens to have both. Therefore, for patients with esophageal cancer, the problem of appetite should be taken as a top priority.