Nursing intervention for esophageal cancer patients who experienced esophagectomy to speed up the process of acquiring new swallowing way

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the difficulties faced in daily life of patients who have undergone esophagectomy due to esophageal cancer and now reside at home, as well as the actual conditions how to cope with such difficulties. 30 patients gave their consent to participate in the study, and semi-structured interview was conducted using open-ended questions. 17 of them had undergone reconstruction of the esophagus via the subcutaneous route anterior to the thoracic wall, and 12 via the posterior mediastinal route, and one via the retrosternal route. The contents of the recorded 29 interviews were transcribed into verbatim record, and as one patient was not consent to record the interview, I took a note of the content of interview. And a qualitative, inductive analysis was conducted using the content analysis method.As a result, it was found that the patients were suffering from six difficulties: "that eating activities had become a far greater hardship than had been expected" "the narrowing of social life" "change of body-image" "painful feeling according to backflow of gastric juice and food" "uneasiness of recurrence and metastasis" and "anxiety to continuing social life". Patients experiencing the former difficulty dealt with it by "learning eating methods suited to them personally in order to survive" and patients experiencing the latter difficulty dealt with it by "accepting the change to save their life" "becoming accustomed to the change slowly" "search for the method for backflow of gastric juice and food" "consult a physician regularly and live cautiously", and then restructure their postoperative lives.