Introduction:

The esophagus cancer is clinically manifested in advanced stages and presents great lethality.

Objective:

To characterize the patients operated on esophagus cancer according to epidemiological, clinical, diagnostic, histological and pathological variables.

Methods:

An observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study of 87 patients with esophagus cancer was carried out; they were operated in the General Surgery Service of Saturnino Lora Teaching Clinical Surgical Provincial Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, in the period 2014-2018.

Results:

This affection prevailed in patients from the male sex (94.2 %) between the 65 and 74 years (37.9 %); the most frequent histhologic type was the squamous cell carcinoma (89.6 %) and the localization in the mean third (49.4 %). The toxic habits that prevailed were nicotine addiction (87.4 %) and consumption of alcohol (75.8 %). The dysphagia and loss of weight showed in 73.5 and 66.6 % of the series, respectively. The diagnosis was carried out by means of images, such as esophagogram, chest, abdomen and pelvis contrast tomography, as well as by means of endoscopy and biopsy.

Conclusions:

It was demonstrated that men are the most affected and it is more frequent the diagnosis in those over 60 years. The link with the habit of smoking and consumption of alcohol was observed. The dysphagia is the most common and late symptom of the disease. The study of clinical, histological and pathological characteristics of patients with esophagus cancer allows an appropriate diagnostic approach of this affection, as well as the development of preventive health actions about the main identified risk factors.

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