Palliative endoscopic therapy of esophageal cancer: self-expanding stents.

Esophageal cancer is the tenth most common malignancy. Recently, there has been an increase in the incidence of carcinoma of distal esophagus. Unfortunately, early esophageal cancer is commonly asymptomatic and inaccessible to examinstion during regular physical examination. Thus, high percentage of patients present with advanced disease at the time of diagnosis. Main symptom are nutritional deficiencies, dysphagia, pressure in the epigastrium and commonly, blood loss. (Tab. 1, Fig. 1, Ref. 4.).