Dr. Daniel Boffa, Minimally Invasive Treatment for
Esophageal Cancer
June 15, 2008
Welcome to Yale Cancer Center Answers with Dr. Ed Chu and Dr. Ken Miller. I am Bruce Barber. Dr. Chu is Deputy Director and Chief of Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center and Dr. Miller is a medical oncologist specializing in pain and palliative care, and he serves as the Director of the Connecticut Challenge Survivorship Clinic. If you would like to join the discussion, you can contact the doctors directly. The address is canceranswers@yale.edu and the phone number is 1-888-234-4YCC. This evening Ken Miller welcomes Dr. Daniel Boffa. Dr. Boffa is an Assistant Professor of Thoracic Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. He joins Ken to talk about the latest information about esophageal cancer and new minimally invasive surgical options.
Miller
Esophageal cancer is apparently one of the fastest rising types of
cancer in the United States. How common is it and how has
that changed over time?
Boffa
Over the past 3 decades esophageal cancer has been shown to be
increasing in incidence. Whenever a cancer is diagnosed more often,
you have to wonder if the cancer is becoming more common, or if we
are doing more that enables us to diagnose it. With esophageal
cancer I think it is a combination of those factors. More
people are undergoing endoscopy for various reflux type symptoms
and are having cancers diagnosed, whereas 30 years ago, we were not
doing that. There are 2 types of esophageal cancer. One is
called squamous and one is called adenocarcinoma. There has
been a shift away from squamous carcinoma both in the United States
and worldwide and some of that relates to the risk factors for the
various histologies of the 2 types of esophageal cancer. For
the adenocarcinoma, which is primarily the kind found in the United
States, obesity, reflux disease and smoking are risk factors. Over
the past three decades obesity has been on the rise in the United
States as has reflux disease, and so that could actually be
contributing to a true increase in the number of patients that are
developing this cancer.
Miller
Let me ask you about smoking. With smoking you picture
someone inhaling smoke and this would involve the respiratory
system. How might that be associated with esophageal cancer
which is digestive?
Boffa
There are two ways. One is the actual compounds that are
toxic that get into the saliva and when you swallow them you
actually have some of these activated nitrate compounds that are in
the saliva that directly irritate the esophagus. When you breathe
these chemicals in, they get into your circulation and cause all
kinds of health risks, both cardiovascular and cancer
related. Smoking is actually related to a whole meriad of
cancers, which the cigarette smoke never itself contacts.
Miller
Now alcohol, is that a direct effect irritating the esophagus or
is it the same in that it has many aspects?
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Boffa
That is an interesting question. Alcohol is more commonly
associated with the squamous cell carcinoma and it is unclear
whether it is direct contact or if it is getting into the
circulation. People that drink a lot of alcohol have a lot of
other problems going on with them as well. Malnutrition is
one of them, and all of the characteristics of patients that are
heavy alcohol users also can confound that and themselves be risk
factors for cancer.
Miller
Now in terms of reflux, reflux is very common, at least in my own
experience of just talking to people about heartburn and reflux
symptoms. How does that increase the risk of esophageal cancer and
my other question is, who among those people who have reflux
particularly needs surveillance?
Boffa
Reflux is a huge problem in the United States and esophageal cancer
by comparison is pretty rare. There are only 16,000 cases of
esophageal cancer each year in the United States whereas there are
millions of refluxers. The mechanism relates to the
irritation of the gastric contents refluxing into the esophagus.
One of the common mechanisms for cancer formation is chronic injury
leading the cells to undergo changes in response to the injury. Any
time a cell responds to an injury, there is a chance that the
genetic makeup can change and the cell can lose control over its
ability to regulate growth. When the cell cannot control its
growth anymore, that is when you get a cancer. Patients that
reflux, gastric acid, and even some of the secretions from lower
down in the intestinal tract, can make it back up into the
esophagus which leads to irritation in the esophageal lining. Over
time, that lining can change into something called Barrett
esophagus and what Barrett's is is an attempt by the body to
protect itself. The lining of the intestine downstream of the
stomach is especially designed to be resilient against gastric acid
and digestive juices. This area of the esophagus that is
exposed to these gastric secretions changes into a lining that
looks more like the downstream intestine, which sounds like a good
thing. The problem is, once it has made that change its
ability to tightly regulate its genetic material is compromised and
there is a defined risk of those cells undergoing changes where
they lose control over their growth. If we took everybody
that has reflux disease, probably 8% to 10% of them would get this
Barrett esophagus, and if you took anybody with Barrett esophagus
the chance of getting a cancer is actually low. It is about a
half percent per year, but it is not zero. I would say that
anybody that has got reflux disease should have at least one
endoscopy to see if they have Barrett esophagus and if you do have
Barrett esophagus, we recommend having an upper endoscopy at least
once every three years. Once you have Barrett's, you should
be plugged into a Barrett screening program.
Miller
We had an email from a fellow named Bob who lives in Bristol and
he said,
"I've been told that I have Barrett esophagus. What is my risk of
developing esophageal cancer and is there anything I can do to
reduce that risk?"
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Boffa
That is the million dollar question. Esophageal cancer has a
very bad reputation. Unfortunately, a lot of patients that
are diagnosed with esophageal cancer are diagnosed at a point where
it is very difficult to cure them. The good news about
Barrett esophagus is patients that are under surveillance programs
actually are diagnosed with early and more curable esophageal
cancers. I would say that the chance of Bob getting
esophageal cancer is low. I would say half percent per year,
but the exciting thing is if Bob was to be diagnosed with
esophageal cancer, his chances of being cured are extremely high,
which is different from somebody that is diagnosed in a more
conventional way.
Miller
So finding out that you have Barrett's, it is concerning, but it
is also an opportunity to have careful surveillance.
Boffa As far as what you can do, given Barrett's, to reduce your chance of getting cancer, is actively being studied right now. The question is, if that lining is what has the chance to give you a cancer, can you get rid of that lining, or can you take antacids or acid suppressive therapy to get rid of that injury? It is not clear whether or not that will reduce your chances of getting cancer, but there are many therapies being used right now to get rid of that lining and they are being studied to see if that in fact translates into a reduction in esophageal cancer. It is a rare thing to happen with Barrett's, so it is going to take awhile before we know that definitively.
Miller
In terms of techniques if someone has that kind of lining of the
Barrett's esophagus, what techniques are there, what is on the
cutting edge?
Boffa
There is just simply destroying this lining. There is
radiofrequency ablation and something called a Bardex catheter. The
reason this even became a concept to be tested was when we had
patients that had Barrett esophagus and we were doing surveillance
biopsies on them, we noticed that the areas that we biopsied grew
back normal mucosa, or normal lining, so the natural followup to
that would be to just get rid of all the Barrett's and see if you
get normal lining everywhere. The techniques to get rid of the
lining are to physically cut a lining out, but the problem with
that is you get a scar that can narrow the esophagus and make it
difficult to pass food through. The radiofrequency ablation
seems to have early results that are very good. There is
something called photodynamic therapy which is being tested, but
has the downside of the chemicals used to use photodynamic therapy,
which is basically giving the person a chemical that when exposed
to light causes the cells to die. The problem with that is
you have this throughout your body, so you are limited on how you
can be exposed to sunlight for quite some time.
Miller
We would like to remind our listeners if you have questions, you
can e-mail us at www.canceranswers@yale.edu.
We are going to take a short break for
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medical minute. Please stay tuned to learn more information about esophageal cancer with Dr. Daniel Boffa from the Yale Cancer Center.
Miller
Welcome back to Yale Cancer Center Answers. This is Dr. Ken
Miller and today I am joined by Dr. Daniel Boffa from the Yale
Cancer Center who is an expert on the treatment of esophageal
cancer. Let's talk about the patient who has just been diagnosed
with early stage esophageal cancer. What are some of the
approaches that are available to try to help that person be cured
of the disease?
Boffa
Esophageal cancer, like a lot of cancers, has a tendency to behave
in a somewhat predictable pattern. As the tumor grows through
the wall of the esophagus, it can spread to the tissues around the
esophagus to lymph nodes around the esophagus and leave that area
and spread to parts of the body such as your lungs and liver that
are remote from your esophagus. So, to treat the patient you
want to give your best estimate as to the likelihood that spread
has occurred, or will occur, and tailor their therapy to address
that. The three modalities, or forms of treatment, that we
currently have for esophageal cancer are surgery, chemotherapy and
radiation therapy. For a disease that has fifteen thousand patients
a year, we actually have quite a bit of information about how to
treat esophageal cancer patients and various treatment plans have
been attempted. It appears that a combination of those modalities,
or treatment strategies, is the best way to go. For earlier
stage patients, surgery is a critical component because the
patient's greatest risk of recurrence is at the site where the
esophagus is, so removing the esophagus with the tissue around it,
is the most important part of that therapy. As the tumor
grows through the wall of the esophagus, it is much more likely to
spread to the lymph nodes around the esophagus. At that
point, surgery with removing the tissue around the
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esophagus is a critical component, but adding radiation and chemotherapy is a way to address microscopic disease.
Miller
For patients with the earliest stage, when it is really just on
the lining, I know that you have tremendous expertise in minimally
invasive surgery, what does that mean in regards to esophageal
cancer?
Boffa
Minimally invasive surgery is removing the esophagus and creating
the reconstruction using small access incisions, or small
incisions, and using a camera to see areas that we normally were
able to see by looking through a substantially larger
incision. The principle of minimally invasive surgery is
first and foremost not to compromise the quality of the
operation. When you are talking about cancer, all of the
factors associated with surgery such as the pain, the stress of the
surgery and the size of the incision are very important
things. At the end of the day, you want to be cured of your
cancer. We can control all those aspects but getting your
cancer out of you in a curative manner is priority one. The
good news is minimally invasive techniques actually do a very good
job. Instead of making a traditional esophagectomy, which is
removing the esophagus as it courses through your chest and as it
enters your belly, it involves entering both the chest and the
belly for larger tumors and for very, very small tumors just
entering the belly and the neck through incisions that range
anywhere from 5 to 7.5 inches in length. Using the minimally
invasive techniques, the same removal strategy is used and the same
reconstruction, meaning your stomach is actually brought through
your chest in the bed of the esophagus and sutured together with
the very beginning of your esophagus. That is all the same.
Instead of having two or three larger incisions you have anywhere
from five to ten much smaller incisions, each of which are about
half an inch long.
Miller
It is pretty amazing for a non-surgeon hearing about this, you are
working through these tiny little incisions, it sounds like you are
now using a scope?
Boffa
The camera actually magnifies the image because clearly there are
areas of the patient that you can see better using the camera that
your naked eye cannot see.
Miller
For a non-surgeon like myself, I still have this image that the
hands-on kind of approach may be better, but statistically, when
you are looking at your success rates, is it good using this
minimally invasive approach?
Boffa
In the right patient population, you are absolutely right that
having a sense of touch is important, surgeons work with their
hands, so that is our most sensitive instrument, but as you get
more comfortable working through the smaller incisions, your
instruments become an extension of your hand and you are able to
gain a progressively greater sense of touch using these instruments
that are
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connecting you to the patient. That being said, there are patients, I would say the past three or four esophagectomies I have done in the past couple of months, where their tumor was particularly stuck to neighboring tissues that were very fragile and in those instances it is critical to be able to feel. Minimally invasive surgery is a great technique, but I would only go to a surgeon that is able to offer multiple approaches because then you are guaranteed that you are having one chosen that is the most appropriate for you.
Miller
For a minimally invasive surgery, what are the recovery, hospital
stay and discomforts?
Boffa
All of those factors are about half as long. You spend about
half as long in the hospital. Your recovery time is about
half as much and you use half as much pain medicine. When you
do an esophagectomy, it is not the size of the incision, it is the
amount of retraction on the tissues that causes patients to be sore
and to have discomfort after surgery. By having the smaller
incisions without the force to retract the tissues, it is a lot
less stress to the tissues, a lot less inflammation and patients
recover more quickly. To that point, an esophagectomy is a
big surgery anyway you cut it. And to that respect it is very
important to have esophageal surgery not just by surgeons who do
esophagectomies with frequency, but at hospitals.
Miller
You just published an important paper comparing surgical outcomes
between general surgeons and specialized thoracic surgeons.
Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Boffa
This was a report from a database that the Society of Thoracic
Surgeons maintains that looks at the procedures that thoracic
surgeons perform. When I looked at lung cancer operations, in
almost 10,000 patients the outcomes were surprisingly good.
In fact, they were much better than a similar group of patients
that were operated on by non-dedicated thoracic surgeons. The
complications and the chance of not surviving your operation is
much, much less if a dedicated thoracic surgeon does your
operation. This isn't completely surprising because people
get very good at what they do very often. The take home
message for that is, have a major surgery done by surgeons and
centers that are experts in this; esophagectomy in particular. The
difference between outcomes in centers that do this a lot compared
to those that do not, is your chance of having a major problem is
several fold higher at the less experienced centers.
Miller
I think you are also making the point that it is not just the
doctors, it is the hospital.
Boffa
Absolutely, there are some excellent non-thoracic surgeons that are
practicing
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doing lung resections and doing esophagectomies, but it is a surgeon that has a lot of experience and a surgeon that works at a center that takes care of these patients often. We have got a great group of nurses. I always say that what we do in the operating room is less than half of the battle, and it is the nurses that take ownership for the patients and by hook or by crook they will get the patient through their recovery. We have got a great group here and it makes all the difference.
Miller
Let me ask you about those patients that have more locally
advanced esophageal cancer, where the tumor is larger and has gone
outside of the esophagus. You mentioned a little bit about
using chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Can you tell us
more about that?
Boffa
Sure. So, for the patients who have some evidence that the
disease has spread, either through the wall of the esophagus or to
the lymphs nodes around the esophagus, we feel the best way to
control that is by giving chemotherapy and radiation first, and
then performing an esophagectomy so that the chemotherapy and
radiotherapy or the radiation will shrink the tumor and in effect
sterilize or get rid of any microscopic cancer cells that might be
living in the tissues around the esophagus. Then they perform the
esophagectomy and after that, in some patients, we administer
additional chemotherapy after the surgery.
Miller
Essentially you can take a patient where you may not be able to
operate and then in a sense make them operable, is that
correct?
Boffa
We think that is true. There is no real data to support
that. If you are inoperable, giving you that therapy will
make you operable. The data would say that you make surgery
easier in some respects and that the chance of cancer coming back
is lower. There is a slight cost to that in that in some
physicians experience they have reported that there is an increase
in complications, but I think that is the minority of reporting
physicians. I think that it can be done very safely and with
good success.
Miller
Who is part of the team? If you look at a patient who comes
in with a new diagnosis of esophageal cancer, in a center like the
Yale Cancer Center, for example, who is involved in seeing the
patient and also in making these complex decisions?
Boffa
With esophageal cancer another key aspect in figuring out where you
are going to have your esophageal cancer cared for is you have to
be looked after by a team. At Yale we have expert medical
oncologists, radiation oncologists, gastroenterologists and
radiologists, as well as surgeons, which review every patient as
part of a tumor board. That is extremely important. Tied into
that, we have a nutritionist, physical therapists and social
workers that all are part of this
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team that take these very complicated issues and are able to get patients through this big surgery.
Miller
It has been exciting to hear about some of the advances, and thank
God it sounds like a more curable disease.
Boffa
Yeah. Absolutely.
Miller
On behalf of Yale Cancer Center Answers, Dan I want to thank you
for joining us.
Boffa
It is my pleasure.
Miller
Also on behalf of our program at the Yale Cancer Center, I want to
wish each of you a safe and healthy week.
If you have questions, comments or would like to subscribe to our Podcast, go to www.yalecancercenter.org where you will also find transcripts of past broadcasts in written form. Next week, you will learn about gastrointestinal cancers with Dr. Charles Cha.