Physicians at the Esophageal Clinic at Mayo Clinic discuss some of the impacts of issues with the esophagus as well as treatment options that are available within the clinic.
symptoms that affect the esophageal track certainly affect patients day to day equality of life being able to eat is a core principle of our daily joy and part of our culture and part of our nutrition. So it's really important for us to be able to help patients to reduce symptoms and be able to swallow better. This official clinic is multidisciplinary and provides specialized care to patients with symptoms and diseases pertaining to the esophagus all the way from the benign end, such as patients with reflux disease to the other end of the spectrum or patients with esophageal cancer or patients with pre cancer of the esophagus, which typically happens in a condition called barrett's esophagus. We are fortunate at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to not only have access to providers who are experts at eliciting the right history, doing the right examination but also coming up with the right investigative plan. One of the most important sets of diagnostic tools that we have is for our patients with esophageal motility disorders, particularly Akhil Asia. For these patients. We have a specialized Asafa Gram protocol to image their esophagus. This is very dependent on the nurses performing the procedure as well as the physician interpreting it. And we all have specialized training at Mayo to complete this. In addition, more recently we've been using an adjunctive test to help guide and manage our Eagle ASIA patients called flip or functional looming imaging probe. This is a probe that's placed during an upper endoscopy and can help us assess secondary peristalsis of the esophagus as well as distance ability or relaxation at the esophagus, gastric junction in oracle asia patients. We have been working on a non endoscopic way of diagnosing isAF Pre cancer or cancer wherein tests can be done by a nurse in outpatient office in about 10 minutes. This involves swallowing a capsule which we call a sponge on a string. It then opens up from a capsule inside the stomach and then is pulled out in samples cinephiles within the esophagus. This has been a great innovation because essentially it allows our patients to avoid serial endoscopic exams with biopsies that require rides and support in anesthesia. Instead they can check their NFL accounts in a 5, 10 minute quick un sedated clinic visit. We also have access to a number of unique treatments where endoscopic lee. We can now non surgically treat patients. We are now doing a procedure called poem O. E. M. Per oral endoscopic My Autumn E wherein instead of doing the my ah to me or the muscle incision from the outside surgically. We can now go in on the inside with the endoscope and make that incision and this becomes an outpatient procedure, patients go home the next day. This can be done in an endoscopy suite particular important for referring physicians to send patients to us that have barrett's esophagus or a pre cancerous condition that can lead to cancer. We have numerous therapies that we use for barrett's esophagus with dysplasia depending on the level of dysplasia. For Nagy. Alor disease. we have experts that can complete endoscopic mucosal resection as well as endoscopic sub mucosal dissection. We also have radio frequency ablation is that can oblate flat areas of dis plastic barrettes. In addition, we have other therapies using frozen nitrogen, such as cryotherapy, that can help reduce the risk of progression to cancer. Our goal is to make care and evaluation and treatment as non invasive as possible. I love when I see patients who have been cured of his oxygen cancer, or patients who are now able to swallow and be on a much improved diet compared to what they were able to do before and the quality of life is amazing.
