Long Term a. Overall goals Our late results, so far, have been excellent. All children, even those who began with the longest gaps or had failed previous operations, have had a successful true primary repair. One child came to us with a tracheostomy in place and although he now has a very satisfactory esophagus, he will not learn to eat until the tracheostomy can be removed. We believe this will be accomplished this summer.
Oral aversion seems to be the most lingering barrier to eating a normal diet.
Although oral aversion may require a great deal of effort by the parents, we believe that in all cases it will be solved. As the testimony to how well they eat, we published our long term follow-up studies and found the weight of our patients was within the normal range. The size distributions were almost precisely normal indicating good nutrition and growth and development. With the referral here of increasingly complicated cases of EA in children who arrive at a year of age or older, not all g-tubes have been out by the age of two. A rhythmic wave of peristalsis which is propagated within the muscle itself, begins in the throat and passes down to the stomach.