Having an oesophageal dilatation or stent procedure

An oesophageal dilatation or oesophageal stent procedure is intended to treat swallowing problems if your food pipe becomes narrow or blocked.

Preparing for the procedure

You need to have a blood test about 1 week before the procedure. Your doctor or clinical nurse specialist tells you about this. They explain how to arrange the blood test when recommending the oesophageal dilatation or stent.

If you have an oesophageal dilatation, you come into hospital for the procedure and can go home on the same day.

If you have an oesophageal stent, you will need to stay in hospital. A nurse on the ward helps you to prepare for the procedure. Before you come to hospital, we give you information about having surgery and travelling here. We also explain what to bring with you.

There are some things that can help you to prepare for an oesophageal dilatation or stent procedure.

Tips to prepare for your procedure

Giving your permission (consent)

We want to involve you in decisions about your care and treatment. If you decide to have an oesophageal dilatation or stent procedure, we will ask you to sign a consent form. This says that you understand what is involved and agree to have the treatment.

You can read more about our consent process.

On the day of the procedure

Please arrive 15 minutes before your appointment to allow time to prepare.

You can ask the IR doctor any questions that you have. We then ask you to sign the consent form confirming that you agree to have the procedure.

We give you a hospital gown to wear. Then we put a small plastic tube (cannula) into your arm. This allows us to give you medicine during the procedure.

Before the procedure, we may give you a small amount of liquid to drink. This is water containing a dissolvable substance called a contrast agent. The substance shows on an imaging monitor. It allows the IR doctor to see the narrowing in your food pipe clearly.

During the procedure

Before the procedure, we spray the back of your throat with a local anaesthetic. This medicine makes the area numb and so you should not feel any pain.

Most people also have conscious sedation. This is when we give you 2 medicines through your cannula to relax you and ease your pain. You often forget most of the procedure afterwards. However, you are awake enough to breathe for yourself and communicate with staff during the procedure.

Some people have a general anaesthetic, where they go to sleep for the procedure.

What happens during the procedure

1. We take you to the interventional radiology (IR) operating theatre and ask you to sit or lie on a table.
2. We attach monitoring equipment to you for measuring your blood pressure, pulse and oxygen level.
3. We give you the anaesthetic and sedation medicines.
4. We pass a fine catheter (long, thin tube) through your mouth and down your food pipe until it reaches the narrow area. We then replace this tube with a catheter that has a balloon attached.
5. The IR doctor uses imaging machines to follow the movement of the catheter and see when the balloon is in the correct position. They then expand the balloon to widen the narrowing in your food pipe. This is done several times, using different sized balloons, until the narrow area has disappeared.
6. If you are having a stent, the IR doctor will put a metal stent across the opening. They do this by passing the stent through a catheter tube.

How the procedure feels

The procedure may be slightly uncomfortable, but the local anaesthetic and sedation should prevent you from feeling any pain.

During the procedure, a nurse stands next to you and looks after you.

If the procedure gets too painful, please tell the nurse. They can then give you more pain medicine through the tube in your arm.

If we put in a stent, you will have some discomfort afterwards. This is because the stent can move. It expands and fixes firmly (embeds) into the narrow area of your food pipe. The pain usually lasts between 4 and 48 hours (2 days). It can be controlled with your usual painkillers.