Tea consumption following esophagectomy improves clinical outcomes

A new study conducted by Juwei Zhang and team showed that postoperative tea consumption improved several functions and symptoms connected to esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in males as well as delayed clinical deterioration. The findings of this study were published in BMC Public Health.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma has a high death rate and a very bad prognosis. Surgery and adjuvant therapy have a substantial impact on quality of life in addition to being able to increase patient survival (QoL). In particular, tea polyphenols, which have anticancer, antioxidant, antiangiogenic, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and apoptotic activities, are abundant in tea along with flavonoids, alkaloids, phenols, theanine, and other chemicals. Tea use has also been demonstrated to enhance mental and physical health as well as mood. In order to better understand how tea drinking affects postoperative quality of life in male patients with ESCC, this study was carried out.

290 male ESCC patients had their quality of life data gathered. The time-to-deterioration (TTD) model was used to determine the time to deterioration and the number of occurrences in each category of quality of life. The Cox proportional risk model was used to examine the relationship between postoperative tea consumption and postoperative quality of life in male ESCC patients.

The key findings of this study were:

1. Patients who consumed tea postoperatively reported delayed TTD in a variety of areas, including general health, role, physical, emotional, and cognitive function, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, dyspnea, constipation, loss of appetite, diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, eating issues, dry mouth, choking while swallowing saliva, coughing, taste difficulties, and speech issues.

2. Drinking tea after surgery enhanced quality of life, including physical function, role function, feeding issues, odynophagia, difficulty swallowing saliva, coughing, and speech issues, according to the multivariate Cox regression analysis.

3. Additionally, the recovery was more pronounced in individuals who drank tea both before and following surgery.

Reference:

Zhang, J., Liu, S., Song, J., Zhou, J., Zeng, Q., Lin, Z., Yu, K., Zhang, S., Qiu, M., Chen, Y., & Hu, Z. (2022). Improvement of postoperative quality of life in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: does tea consumption have a role? In BMC Public Health (Vol. 22, Issue 1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14646-z