Does airway metallic stent limit additional treatments in patients with malignant airway stenosis?

Excerpt

We read with great interest the paper of Iyoda et al. [1]. They retrospectively compared the data of 106 patients undergoing airway stenting with silicone stent (SS) (n = 45) and metallic stent (MS) (n =  61) for malignant airway stenosis within a period of 20 years. SS compared to MS group had higher survival rate (p = 0.0173), more additional treatments for thoracic malignancy (p = 0.0007), including chemoradiotherapy (p = 0.0268) and radiotherapy (p = 0.0300), and similar complication rates. On multivariate analysis, additional treatments and complication rates were favorable prognostic factors. SS compared to MS facilitated a greater degree of additional treatments, resulting in prolonged survival. The incompatibility of MS with radiotherapy was addicted as possible explanation. …