We retrospectively analyzed 17 patients with esophageal stent who underwent cervical esophageal and/or hypopharyngeal stenosis after total laryngectomy (TL) from January 2014 to January 2018. The success rate of stent implantation was 100%. Dysphagia in 16 patients improved to class 0 or 1 (16/17, 94.12%) after stent implantation and in 1 patient was improved to class 2 (1/17, 5.88%). Two patients died of tumor progression at 7 months and 11 months after stent implantation, respectively, but both could eat semi-solid/solid food before death. Dysphagia was resolved in the remaining 15 patients, and there was no recurrence of dysphagia including feeding obstruction during follow-up. Therefore, this case series concludes that the esophageal stent position after TL can be much higher than that of patients with normal pharyngeal structures. Esophageal stent implantation is a feasible and effective treatment for patients with laryngopharyngeal/esophageal stenosis following TL.
Keywords: esophageal stent; laryngectomy; laryngopharyngeal stenosis.