Abstract:

Introduction: Esophageal cancer (EC) is the 8th most common cancer worldwide, 7th commonly occurring in men and 13th most commonly occurring in women. Currently, esophageal cancer is the eighth most common incident cancer in the world because of its extremely aggressive nature and poor survival rate (2). There are two common histological patterns, the squamous cell carcinoma which is common in the developing world and the adenocarcinoma which is common in the developed world. Both are more prevalent in men than in women.

Aim: This study was carried to determine the prevalence and histopathological pattern of esophageal carcinoma at Bugando medical centre.

Method: This was a retrospective study of histologically confirmed cases of esophageal cancer seen at Bugando medical centre from 2015 to March 2019. The data was obtained from histological laboratory medical record computer database whereby a sample size of 234 patients was retrieved and analyzed using SPSS computer software version 20.0 Chicago IL.

Results: The prevalence of esophageal carcinoma was as follows; squamous cell carcinoma had 61.1% and adenocarcinoma had 1.7%, thus squamous cell carcinoma is the most prevalent histopathology at Bugando medical centre. The middle third part of the esophagus was found to be the commonest site for esophageal carcinoma, with the data also showing very young age of presentation as low as 19 years old.

Conclusion: The burden of esophageal carcinoma should be expected to increase because of the young age at presentation of the disease. But also because cancerous diseases poses major threat to public health and the cancer burden keeps raising in our country. Thus there’s a need to continue improving cancer statistics which will provide scientific basis for cancer prevention and control.