If one day medicine advances to the point where organs can be replaced at will, then surgeons can cut as much as they like. Is that even possible? Creating organs is basically playing creator, it’s too godlike; with the level of science humans have right now, that goal is a bit too far off. Better to focus on how to develop drugs that can keep killing tumor cells more quickly.

Same logic: where are you going to find a big missing segment of esophagus to patch into a case of esophageal atresia? The only option is to let the child hurry up and grow their own organs longer to make up for it. Note, this "growing organs" doesn’t mean the esophagus can grow back such a long missing segment. What doctors are hoping for is that with good nutrition, the other organs can grow bigger.

To grow organs you need nutrition, but with the esophagus blocked, no nutrients are getting down into the lower digestive tract.

The child can’t just stop eating and not replenish nutrition. This counts as a structural defect of the digestive tract, and what’s needed is not intravenous nutrition, but to hurry up and reconstruct the digestive tract. At this point doctors will choose to perform a gastrostomy or enterostomy for the patient.

Still a "fistula," but this time it’s deliberate and man‑made, a medical treatment method. They make a hole on the abdominal wall and tunnel through (forming a fistula tract) to reach the patient’s stomach or intestines. That way, nutritional stuff can be delivered from outside directly into the child’s digestive tract for digestion and absorption.

The above ostomy operation is the first‑stage surgery; its goal is to prepare for the second stage.

Once nutrition is adequate and the child’s other organs have grown healthily to a certain age—usually when the child is about four, five, or six—doctors check and confirm that the other organs are sturdy enough. That means the doctors can look to those other organs for material to patch the esophagus.

The second‑stage surgery is this: they take a segment from one of the child’s other organs to replace the missing piece of esophagus, reconnecting the esophagus and stomach so the digestive tract system becomes continuous again.

This surgical approach is similar to esophageal cancer surgery: cut a segment of stomach to make an esophagus, or else cut a segment of intestine to make an esophagus. Such procedures are called gastric or colonic interposition for esophageal replacement.

Sounds brutal. This kid is basically getting treatment similar to what cancer patients go through, right from birth.

After hearing all this, no parent would still wish their child had type I.

Hu Hao picked up the handkerchief the doctor had given him and wiped his sweat again, thankful he hadn’t successfully cursed his own son.

So which type is the best? Putting it all together, it’s definitely type V (H‑type). H‑type is the only subtype of esophageal atresia where the child’s entire esophagus is fully formed; it just happens to be connected to the trachea by a little fistula tract. H‑type is much easier for doctors to handle. Starting last year, Shou’er Surgery Department has been able to use thoracoscopy to fix H‑type fistulas.

Compared to those surgeries where you’re cracking open the chest at the drop of a hat, this operation counts as a "small incision," and at Shou’er it’s considered a relatively "small" surgery.

So earlier, when Hu Hao as a parent was loudly yelling that his son was in grave danger—actually, compared with other kids, his son is the lucky one.

You have to realize that for children with congenital diseases like this, it’s often not just a single organ that’s malformed. Many kids are born with multiple organ malformations and need big combined surgeries from several departments working together.

In the eyes of the surgeons at Shou’er, this child’s illness, as far as they can tell at present, is relatively minor—just like Doctor Tian said, he has to wait in line and make way for other critically ill children. But that doesn’t mean the doctors don’t take it seriously; a small illness can still turn into a big one. They explain everything clearly to the family, get the family to calm down and go back to their normal work and life, and avoid accidents.