Hi-I don't know what happens if there are leaks. My guess would be they have to heal more with leaks, but I don't think it's that common. I tend not to let myself entertain thoughts about the "what ifs" and figured if they came we would deal with it in the moment. We had an excellent surgeon and I trusted she would know what to do if something was wrong. In the moment tends to be our approach, particularly since cancer. Pat had 2 or 3 swallows on consecutive days, and even though each was fine, his surgeon was slow to start on water because she really believes it's important for anastosmoses (sp?) to heal well before introducing anything to digestive tract. She also was really strict about not sucking on those swabs to wet your lips and inside of mouth. So it was day 7-8 by water (12 days at Lahey-UTI kept him there extra day). Then he got 1 oz of water every two hours for the next two days before going to full liquid diet and progressing back through soft and regular food once we got him home. We used the J tube which they put in at surgery at night for several months post surgically, and also added some extra hydration through the tube. Pat also had a lung resection for biopsy of nodules that lit up on PET at dx, so he had two large incisions, and may have progressed a bit slower because of that, although at 50 he had the advantage of relative youth and good health other than EC. Make sure they keep lots of hydration in tube once they do swallow. The barium can really block the system up and make for a bout of constipation. We one crappy nurse and it was on the day of a swallow (70 degrees in March in Boston-she didn't want to work that day), and she never flushed his tube but wrote it on his chart (I was there all day and the bottle of water stayed on the table). He paid for that dearly. By the time it all broke loose days later after 3 enemas they thought he was having a heart attack on the monitors, and a crew of people came running to check on him. He was in such a state that day with the discomfort that I actually left for a bunch of hours during the day because I couldn't bear to be around him (that was the only time he got to a place I couldn't take in 2+ years and we had some very bad times along the way). So plenty of water in the feeding tube with the swallows.