Symptoms before death from advanced esophageal cancer

1. Bleeding: When cancerous tissue necroses, ruptures or invades large blood vessels, it can cause vomiting blood or black stools. When the tumor invades the aorta, it can cause massive bleeding and death.

2. Dysphagia: Progressive dysphagia is a typical symptom of mid- to late-stage esophageal cancer. It starts with the inability to swallow solid food smoothly, or swallowing it after washing it with soup. Then, semi-liquid food is also blocked, and then liquid food is also difficult to swallow. The degree of dysphagia is closely related to the pathological type, and the stricture type and medullary type are more serious.

3. Vomiting mucus: Esophageal changes caused by esophageal lesions lead to incomplete or complete esophageal obstruction, which makes secretions difficult to drain and accumulate in the narrow upper part of the esophagus, stimulating esophageal retrograde peristalsis and then being vomited out.

4. Lumps in the neck and supraclavicular area: These are common signs of advanced esophageal cancer. The lumps are painless, progressively enlarge, and are hard. They are usually on the left side but can also be bilateral.

5. Pain: Chest pain or back pain is one of the common symptoms of advanced esophageal cancer. The pain is dull, burning, or stabbing, and may be accompanied by a sense of heaviness. Chest and back pain is often caused by the invasion of cancer, which causes esophagitis, mediastinitis, and even affects adjacent organs, nerves, and paravertebral tissues. Pain is more common in ulcerative and medullary types with ulcers.

6. Hoarseness: When the tumor directly invades or the metastatic lesions compress the recurrent laryngeal nerve, vocal cord paralysis occurs, leading to hoarseness. Hoarseness may improve in some patients with effective treatment.