Our Achalasia Surgery Experiences with the Achalasia Surgery Review

Objective: Achalasia means disorder and dysfunction of Lower Esophageal Sphincter. Achalasia treatment was two types: non-surgical treatments and surgical treatments. Heller myotomy is the best surgical method of achalasia. In our study, we want to present our achalasia surgical experiences and the post-operative follow-up status of the patients for contribution to the literature. Methods: After getting permission from ethics committee of our university, we collected data from patients who operated for achalasia between 2011 and 2019 retrospectively in Department of General Surgery, Van YuzuncuYil University Faculty of Medicine. Age and gender status, diagnosis process, presence of additional esophageal disease in the distal esophagus, surgical type, length of myotomy, presence of esophageal mucosal repair, duration of hospital stay and postoperative follow-up status of the patients were evaluated. Findings: In our study, there were 11 patients who underwent achalasia surgery. The mean age of patients was 31.6 (19-50) years. 63.63% (n = 7) of all cases were female and 36.37% (n = 4) were male. Apart from one case (case with hiatal hernia association) other cases were performed laparotomically. The mean myotomy length was calculated as 9.09 (8-15) cm. The mean duration of hospital stay was 5.18 (3-7) days. Among the patients only one patient had difficulty in swallowing in the first month control. But it was observed that the same patient did not have difficulty in swallowing in the third month control. Discussion: In our study, considering both our post-operative complication status and the patients' 1st and 3rd month controls; we saw that achalasia surgery was performed successfully in our clinic. An important deficiency is that laparoscopic surgery is not yet performed at our desired level in our clinic.