Yes, absolutely. How can anyone undergo surgery and have no pain. But we try our level best to control that pain. Yes, you will have some discomfort at first after surgery, but things improve over time.

Short answer is yes. But everything takes time and more importantly, effort. Effort comes on your part. If you stay active, walk 20 min at least twice a day, starting 2 weeks before any surgery and then continue this habit for at least a month after surgery, you will recover with flying colors. The more you’ll put in your recovery, the more will come out of it. There is one exception, however. Look up q10.

That is a million-dollar question. No one really knows. Sometimes it’s genetics and sometimes it’s exposure to carcinogens. If you are or have been a smoker, be it cigarettes, vape, sheesha, or bukhoor, all such foreign agents have toxic chemicals that damage not only your lung but other vital organs that can pre-dispose you to malignancy. Having said that, we all know smokers who never develop cancer and never-smokers who have 2, or even sometimes 3, cancers. Unfortunately, there is no clear link on who gets cancer and when and while smoking is associated with cancer, it’s never proven to be the cause.

This is another good question. So when we talk about cancers, there is a term that we refer to in oncology as “doubling time”. Tumor doubles every few days, months, or even years. Every tumor is different from another. They both can histologically be the same, but still behave differently. In other words, two patients can have the exact same type of lung cancer, say adenocarcinoma, and of the same size, but their tumor doubling time can be entirely different. We use this reference only when we have prior scans for patients to determine how fast can we expect a tumor to grow.

It is never ok to watch a tumor grow. In other words, if your doctor feels and is almost convinced that your nodule is cancer, it is best to either get extra testing done or have it removed to obtain a diagnosis. Because tumors may not just grow in size, but occasionally, spread in your body. The larger the tumor, the higher the chance for metastatic spread. Small nodules, < 1cm, however, are quite often watched depending on their location, appearance, and chance of changing over time.

Well, the sooner, the better. For any elective surgery, it is best to quit smoking at least 1 month prior to avoid any peri-operative complications such as pneumonia, wound infection, air leak from lung (for lung operations), arrhythmia like atrial fibrillation, and blood clots. That doesn’t mean that if you quit smoking or don’t smoke, you won’t have the complication, but it simply decreases that chances that you may. For the most part, every surgeon’s dogma is to NOT operate if you are still smoking unless it’s an emergency.

Never. As a thoracic lung surgeon, I would never advise my patient to resume smoking.

Esophagectomy is a life-altering surgery. Unfortunately, after the surgery, you will never be able to eat a whole solid meal like you did before. Because your stomach has been sacrificed for the surgery, you will have to eat small volume meals about 8-10 times per day, each portion about the size of your palm. Also, you will never be able to lay flat. Because we take away two out of your three sphincters from the esophagus during the surgery, you will be predisposed to bile reflux for the rest of your life. For this reason, we always advise our patients to always sleep at an angle, at 30 degrees at all times, to avoid aspiration.