Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of irreversible vision loss. There are two primary forms of AMD: exudative age-related macular degeneration (WAMD) and atrophic AMD (DAMD). While numerous medications are currently available for the treatment of WAMD, yielding significant therapeutic outcomes, effective treatments for DAMD remain scarce. Various animal studies and clinical trials on DAMD treatment have been conducted, focusing primarily on antioxidants, complement pathway inhibitors, mitochondrial protectors, visual cycle inhibitors, neuroprotectants, amphiphilic polymer-based drug delivery systems, cell therapy, photobiomodulation therapy, gene therapy, surgical interventions, and traditional Chinese medicine. Among these, antioxidant supplementation with vitamins and complement pathway inhibitor APL-2 and ACP have received Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment of DAMD. With the continuous development of the medical field, the future will explore the treatment methods with little trauma, good efficacy and good patient compliance, and successfully achieve clinical transformation.
Definitive chemoradiotherapy (dCRT) is the general recommendation for the treatment of cervical esophageal cancer for organ preservation. However, the long-term survival of dCRT is not satisfactory. Surgical resection alone is not superior to dCRT in the treatment of cervical esophageal cancer. Surgical resection is often combined with laryngectomy, which will affect the quality of life. Recent evidence suggests that neoadjuvant therapy combined with surgery improves the long-term survival of cervical esophageal cancer. On the other hand, the development of technologies such as laryngeal preservation surgery and minimally invasive esophagectomy has reduced the risk of operation and improved the quality of life. This article will review the new progress in the comprehensive treatment of cervical esophageal cancer from the perspective of surgery.
Objective To evaluate the accuracy and investigate the influence factors of preoperative T staging by endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) in patients with postoperative pathological stage of T2 esophageal carcinoma (EC). Methods A total of 206 patients with EC underwent EUS and curative operation in Henan Tumor Hospital from March 2015 to January 2016 were enrolled, among whom 81 patients were identified with pathological stage of T2 EC followed by esophageal resection without induction therapy. There were 59 males and 22 females, with a mean age of 63.9 years and meadian age of 63.0 years. We reviewed the medical records of the 81 patients and compared EUS findings with histopathologic results according to clinicopathologic factors. Results The overall accuracy of EUS for evaluating staging of T2 EC was 61.7% (50/81), while 38.3% (31/81) were overstaged by EUS. Accuracy differed between the accurate staging group and over staging group (P=0.023). There was no significant difference in sex, age, tumor location and shape, histologic type, tumor differentiation or lymph node metastasis between two groups. Conclusion EUS is highly overstaged in the diagnosis of postoperative pathological stage of T2 EC. Higher postoperative pathological TNM stage appears to be a factor of EUS overstaging in patients with postoperative pathological stage of T2 EC.