Reconstructive and rehabilitating methods in patients with dysphagia and nutritional disturbances

As diverse as the causes of oropharyngeal dysphagia can be, as broad is the range of potential therapeutical approaches. In the past two decades, methods of plastic-reconstructive surgery, in particular microsurgically revascularised tissue transfer and minimally invasive, endoscopic techniques of every hue have substantially added to the portfolio of reconstructive surgery available for rehabilitating deglutition. Numerically, reconstructing the pharyngolaryngeal tract following resection of squamous-cell carcinomas in the oral cavity, the pharynx and the larynx has been gaining ground, as has functional deglutitive therapy performed to treat posttherapeutical sequelae. Dysphagia and malnutrition are closely interrelated. Every third patient hospitalised in Germany suffers from malnutrition; ENT tumour patients are not excluded. For patients presenting with advancing malnutrition, the mortality, the morbidity and the individual complication rate have all been observed to increase; also a longer duration of stay in hospital has been noted and a lesser individual toleration of treatment, diminished immunocompetence, impaired general physical and psychical condition and, thus, a less favourable prognosis on the whole. Therefore, in oncological patients, the dietotherapy will have to assume a key role in supportive treatment. It is just for patients, who are expected to go through a long process of deglutitive rehabilitation, that enteral nutrition through percutaneous endoscopically controlled gastrostomy (PEG) performed at an early stage can provide useful and efficient support to the therapeutic efforts. Nutrition and oncology are mutually influencing fields where, sooner or later, a change in paradigms will have to take place, i.e. gradually switching from therapy to prevention. While cancer causes malnutrition, feasible changes in feeding and nutrition-associated habits, including habitual drinking and smoking, might lower the incidence of cancer worldwide by 30 to 40% (American Institute of Cancer Research 1999). Esse oportet, ut vivas, non vivere ut edas. / Thou shouldst eat to live, not live to eat. Cicero 106 - 43 B.C.