[Animal experiment study of anastomosis healing after partial resection of the pre-irradiated thoracic esophagus].

Background: Multimodal therapeutic concepts in cases of neoplasms of the intestinal tract entail the risk of undesirable complications with respect to healing of wounds and anastomoses. The separate steps of a combined treatment consisting radiation therapy and partial resection of the thoracic esophagus were performed in animal experiments to study the effect of radiation therapy on the healing of anastomoses.

Method: Adult non-purebred dogs were irradiated in a defined thoracic field with a Betatron (42 MeV) and subsequently underwent esophagectomy.