Perfil epidemiológico de pacientes com câncer de esôfago atendidos em um hospital terciário

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is the sixth most common among men and the fifteenth among women when considered non-melanoma cancers. The most affected population is the one found after the fifth decade of life, men, white and with socio cultural habits of risk, such as smoking, alcoholism and mate in the case of the South. The symptoms are nonspecific and late but are characterized by progressive dysphagia in addition to other signs and symptoms, such as weight loss, odynophagia, chest pain and dyspnoea. Objective: To describe the clinical and epidemiological profile of the biopsies analyzed by the Passo Fundo Institute of Pathology with a diagnosis of esophageal cancer at the Hospital de Clínicas de Passo Fundo - RS. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with all esophageal biopsies performed at Hospital de Clínicas in Passo Fundo that were analyzed by the Passo Fundo Institute of Pathology and biopsies diagnosed with esophageal cancer were considered part of the sample. The period analyzed was from January 1, 2008 to January 1, 2018 and the data collection was carried out from the database of the Pathology sector, which contained anatomopathological information. An analysis of the numerical variables and the distribution of frequencies, absolute and relative, was carried out. To check the association between the epidemiological profile of patients (independent variables) and the histopathological type of esophageal neoplasia (dependent variables), the chi-square test was used, considering a level of statistical significance, values of p <0.05. Results: A clinical and anatomopathological profile of patients with esophageal cancer was found, being these men (65.8%) older than 55 years (81.4%), white (78.8%), with a predominance of histological type squamous cell carcinoma (78.8%) and the most affected site was the middle esophageal third (55.0%). Conclusions: The study found several information consolidated in the literature regarding esophageal cancer, among them: age group, sex, histological type and location of neoplastic involvement. These were the variables that, according to the literature, are in accordance with what was expected, and other variables such as alcoholism and smoking could not be significantly evaluated due to the absence of this information in several medical records. Thus, the findings of this study agree with what was expected for the disease and contribute to a better understanding of the population of Passo Fundo and region.