I am 51 and otherwise in very good health and physically fit. I've had GERD for decades,self medicating with Tums. Three months ago biopsies, taken during an endoscopy, were diagnosed as Barrets with High Grade Dysplasia. My doctors say that the only sure way to prevent this from turning into cancer is an esophagectomy. They say ablative therapy is not perfected and might just "cover up" the potential cancer.

A second biopsy is scheduled to double check the initial diagnosis. (Cleveland Clinic looked at the first one, Stanford and Johns Hopkins will examine the second, Stanford also looked at the first one but said they couldn't confirm HGD due to inflamation in the cell samples. Thus the 2nd biopsy using the EMR method).

So,is esophagectomy truly the only sure fire way to stop this HGD from becoming cancer?