Treatment Options

What happens if you scope a patient and you notice that the patient has Barrett’s Esophagus? And you get the biopsy sample back and it says Barrett’s esophagus with high grade dysplasia. Now you could think of that as one step before cancer. So what should take place? Well, that patient should undergo a repeat endoscopy relatively soon with biopsies. If the results come back again, Barrett’s esophagus with high grade dysplasia, then that patient should be referred for therapy to eradicate that high grade dysplasia. And that’s done by several different means. Basically, what would happen is patient endoscoped, and a thermal or heat type device is used to actually cook or destroy the abnormal tissue. If the patient has high grade dysplasia and some focus of early cancer, then that patient needs to be referred for surgical treatment.