Chemotherapy for Carcinoma of the Hypopharynx and Cervical Esophagus

Abstract

Chemotherapy of hypopharyngeal and cervical esophageal cancer generally is considered to have minimal clinical significance, useful only as an adjuvant therapy.As to the methods of chemotherapy performed on actual clinical cases, there are intraarterial infusion combined with surgery and general adminstration for the purpose of prevention of distant metastasis. The intra-arterial infusion chemotherapy is hardly available for this disease, since it is difficult to infuse chemotherapeutics into the hypopharynx and cervical esophagus by retrograde catheterization through Truncus thyreocervicalis. On the other hand, general adminstration of anticancer agent is performed for the purpose of the prevention of distant metastasis, especially for the inhibition of pulmonary metastasis.As to the effect of Bleomycin in treatment of this disease, the rate of effectiveness is 42.8% in total 35 cases.The posibility of this disease being caused by means of Bleomycin alone was exceedingly small. But, the expectation was greater when the agent was adminstered in combination with irradiation treatment, in which the dosage of the either may be much smaller than when using them alone. The direct local injection of Bleomycin on recurrent foci is a curative therapy.