Irradiation stents: a clever, and maybe costly, fusion

The ideal palliative therapy would provide rapid and sustained relief of dysphagia (the primary symptom of advanced oesophageal cancer) with one intervention, result in few complications, be widely available at low cost, have minimum need for hospital admission or re-intervention, and extend survival. Results from recent prospective studies6,7 have shown that the combination of stenting and brachytherapy was safe but did not result in prolonged survival.6,7 Importantly, the overall cost of brachytherapy is nearly twice that of stent placement, in a European country with an existing radiation therapy infrastructure.8 In view of this background, why did Zhu and colleagues find a benefit with 125I stents?