Updates: Scans and Esophageal Stricture

Hello Everyone,
Sorry for being absent for so long. Dad's condition and work didn't given me much time to come back here. I see we have some new faces and Eric (chemosmoker) has updated his picture. Eric, if that's really you... Oh boy, what a handsome man! You remind me of a very famous actor, whose name escaped from my mind... oops...

I have some updates on my father's condition, some good, some bad, some complicated...

As some of you may remember, my father is IV EC Squamous Cell, currently on Xeloda only for maintenance chemo. He just did a CT and MRI. CT picked up more mets on T5, a couple of ribs and left shoulder. MRI was done ONLY on the spine and confirmed the mets on T5. Tumor markers showed elevated but still stay in the range. However, both scans and tumor markers were done at a different hospital.

Since August, he's been having on-and-off difficulty swallowing. He did a barium test, which showed a stricture of 15mm long and about 4-5mm wide. He considered both stretching and putting in a stent, but is not comfortable with either one of them. So far, he's taking some herbs and feels the stricture is getting better.

So my questions for people who have experienced this:

1) How important is it to use the same machines for the follow up scans? I've been reading a lot about this online and got the impression that results from different machines can't be compared with accuracy. But I'm wondering about your own personal experience.

2) My father's radiologist thinks the stricture is caused by radiation done back in April, not new tumors. Could it be possible since it's been almost 8 months? We really wanted to do a biopsy but his esophagus is too narrow to do it.

I really appreciate you reading this post and am looking forward to your feedbacks. Now, I'm onto others' posts and see if I can contribute more.

Thank you all very much!

Alex

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Father:
December 2009 - dx Staged II. Radiation and chemo (Cisplatin and Fluorouracil).
April 2010 - Remission.
April 2011 - Found bone mets on Spine No. 4, 6, 7. Staged IV. Radiation and chemo 1st line (Docetaxel, Cisplatin and
Fluorouracil). 4 cycles. Scans (CT & MRI)showed mets under control. Tumor markers came down & within range.
September 2011 - Chemo 2nd line Docetaxel, Cisplatin and Xeloda. 2 cycles. Then moved to maintenance chemo with Xeloda only.
Waiting for scans.
December 2011 - Scans (CT & MRI) shows mets on T5, a couple of ribs, and shoulders. But he couldn't do MRI to confirm the mets
on ribs and left shoulder. Tumor markers were elevated but still in range. Both scans and tumor markers were done
at a different hospital, so we are not sure about the comparability of the results.