Retrospective Analysis of Patients with Zenker’s Diverticula: A Single Center Analysis of 103 Cases with Zenker’s Diverticula Undergoing Endoscopic Treatment, Including Analysis of the Changes in Swallowing-Related Quality of Life Post-Operatively using SWAL-QOL Questionnaires - Abstract
Purpose: In this retrospective we evaluate swallowing dysfunction in patients with an established diagnosed of Zenker’s diverticulum before and after endoscopic treatment using the SWALQOL Questionnaire. Besides, we investigate whether there are correlations between the symptoms, the size of the diverticulum and the SWAL-QOL score pre-operatively
Methods: We assessed the demographic, clinical, radiographic and operative characteristics of all 103 patients of whom 98 patients did undergo surgery. Besides we analysed the scores of pre- and postoperative SWAL-QOL Questionnaires that was completed by 69 patients.
Results: The mean age of our patients was 70 years (age range 35 – 101 years), and 66% of them were male. Dysphagia was present in 77%, followed by regurgitation in 61% and globus sensation in 37% of the patients.
Based on the measurements on barium swallowing imaging (n=100), diverticula were subdivided by size, showing 44% small, 23% intermediate, 25% large and 9% very large diverticula. We noticed a significant increase of the median preoperative total SWAL-QOL score (638/1100) to the post-operative total SWAL-QOL score (908/1100) (p<0.001), as well as a significant improvement in 10 of the 11 subscales.
Conclusion: This study reports a significant improvement in swallowing dysfunction after endoscopic treatment of Zenker’s diverticulum as measured by the SWAL-QOL questionnaire. There was no significant association between size of the diverticulum and symptomatology or SWAL-QOL scores. We did find a significant association between SWAL-QOL score and the preoperative symptom weight loss, but not with the other symptoms.