Ireland has one of the highest rates of oesophageal cancer in Europe. Now a new study has found that patients who undergo surgery for the disease have a much better chance of long-term survival if the operation is carried out by a surgeon who has carried out the same procedure many times before.

The oesophagus is the hollow tube that brings food and liquids from the throat to the stomach. According to the Irish charity, the Oesophageal Cancer Fund, around 450 Irish people are newly diagnosed every year and surgery is the main form of treatment for the disease.

Swedish scientists decided to look more closely at the surgical option. They noted that while surgery is the main form of treatment, this is a major operation and just one in three people who undergo it survive for five years or more.

This study is the most comprehensive of its kind. It included over 1,300 patients who had been operated on in Sweden between 1987 and 2005. These were then followed up in 2011.

The scientists found that patients who were operated on by surgeons who had performed this operation many times before, had a 22% reduced risk of dying in the long-term, in other words, they were much more likely to survive at least five years or more.

As a result of the findings, the scientists said that the treatment of oesophageal cancer should be centralised to fewer surgeons, to allow them to concentrate their work on this complicated procedure.

Details of these findings are published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

For more information on oesophageal cancer, click here