Abstract
Stents were endoscopically implanted in 88 patients with stenosis of the upper gastrointes-tinal tractassociated with unresectable, malignant tumors. Of these, 63 patients who could be followed up were studied from the standpoint of improvement for quality of life. Two types of stents were used: one a plastic stent and the other a self-expandable stent. We compared the plastic stents with the self-expandable stents. Among the patients with implanted plastic stents, a total of 44.7% showed some improvementin oral food intake: 15.8% were able to ingest an all-rice-gruel diet and 28.9% had improved oral foodintake. Among the patients with implanted self-expandable stents, a total of 80% showed improvement: 35.0% were on an all-rice-gruel diet, and 45.0% had better oral food intake than before stent placement. The duration of the survival in patients with plastic stents ranged from 0.3 to 19 months (mean: 3.4 months), and that for patients with self-expandable stents ranged from 0.2 to 14.3 months (mean: 5.7months). From additional examinations, we concluded that the self-expandable stents are easier to implant, more effective and have a lower complication rate than plastic stents.
