Just by the tongue of China a “food is another kind of nostalgia for the Chinese”, it is clear that the importance of eating for the Chinese, but such beautiful sentences hidden underneath is not only beautiful nostalgia, for us, worry more is the food “stomach”. The stomach is an important organ of the human body.
Stomach is an important organ of human body, which is easily affected by bad living and eating habits, coupled with people’s lack of sufficient vigilance to the early symptoms of stomach cancer and insufficient knowledge of the necessity of endoscopy, especially many people delay the best treatment time because of the fear of gastroscopy, which has led to many irreparable tragedies.
The age of stomach cancer onset is nearly 10 years earlier
According to the latest 2012 China Tumor Registry Annual Report, nationwide, 6 people are diagnosed with cancer every minute, among which gastric cancer has ranked the top three malignant tumor deaths in China for many years. In Beijing, for example, one out of every four deaths is due to cancer, and stomach cancer is one of the high incidence species. There are about 2400 new cases of gastric cancer in Beijing, and the incidence rate reaches 18.59/100,000, accounting for 6% of all malignant tumors in Beijing.
With the accelerated pace of social development, people’s eating habits have also changed, with long-term smoking, drinking alcohol, eating barbecue, and various kinds of pickled foods flooding people’s tables.
However, all this could have been avoided. Medical data shows that if early gastric cancer can be detected in time, its cure rate can reach over 90%.
How to prevent stomach cancer?
Our country divides cancer prevention into three levels.
Primary prevention, i.e. etiological prevention, is to take measures against the causative factors (or risk factors) before the disease occurs, which is also the fundamental measure to prevent and eliminate the disease. The World Health Organization has proposed the four cornerstones of human health: “reasonable diet, moderate exercise, smoking cessation and alcohol restriction, and psychological balance” as the basic principles of primary prevention.
The risk factors for gastric cancer prevention include H. pylori (Hp) infection, long-term chronic gastritis, smoking, and family history of gastric cancer. In addition, it is confirmed that blood type A has the highest incidence of gastric cancer among all blood types.
Secondary prevention is what we usually call “three early” prevention, that is, early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment. It is a measure to prevent or slow down the development of the disease.
For a disease like gastric cancer, which has a long latent period and extremely complicated causes, especially for those with family history, it is impossible to achieve complete primary prevention. However, since the occurrence of gastric cancer is the result of the long-term effect of causative factors (including chronic gastritis), early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment are the most feasible solutions, which can be achieved by early gastric cancer prevention screening.
How to do early screening for gastric cancer?
Currently, there are two methods of gastric cancer screening, namely upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (gastroscopy) and barium meal X-ray (gastric fluoroscopy), but since X-ray is not as accurate as gastroscopy, gastroscopy is currently recognized as the most rapid and direct way to detect early gastric cancer.
In spite of this, 44% of people said they are “very afraid and avoid it if they can” in a cancer survey; more than 60% of people know that regular endoscopy is beneficial, but they cannot do it; less than 10% of people can really do regular endoscopy.
Thankfully, today’s gastroscopy has gotten rid of the embarrassing situation that people were “wanting to welcome or refuse”. Nowadays, the latest “painless gastroscopy” testing method, the tube of the gastroscope used has become extremely small and soft, before the endoscopy, will also be used with anesthesia drugs, so that the patient will soon fall into a state of sleep, physical and mental relaxation, relaxed and comfortable to complete the gastroscopy. This reduces the examination time and makes the patient feel no pain. In terms of efficacy, it is no different from traditional gastroscopy and has a very high accuracy rate in diagnosing various stomach diseases, especially stomach cancer.
Here, I must emphasize the point that people with abnormal symptoms of digestive tract, those with family history of gastrointestinal type cancer or precancerous diseases (such as atrophic gastritis, etc.), office workers with long-term gastrointestinal discomfort symptoms or unbalanced diet structure and other high-risk groups of gastrointestinal diseases should receive regular gastrointestinal examinations under the advice of doctors to curb the disease and improve the quality of life in time. Especially, young people must be reminded that if they experience sudden digestive discomfort, such as symptoms of fullness, indigestion, acid reflux, loss of appetite, or inexplicable weight loss, they need to seek timely medical consultation for early diagnosis and treatment to prevent the occurrence of gastric cancer.
The following high-risk groups of gastric cancer screening should remember to have early examination, early treatment and early prevention.
People with bad lifestyle habits (long-term smoking or eating barbecue, spicy, meat, fried food, pickled food, drinking alcohol, etc.)
Those with family history of gastrointestinal tumors
Those with severe mouth ulcers and bad breath
Those with epigastric discomfort for more than two weeks (flatulence, stuffiness, burping, esophageal burning or difficulty swallowing, etc.)
Those who have pain behind the sternum
H. pylori infection
Positive fecal occult blood, or abnormal status or color change for more than two weeks
Diarrhea of unknown origin
Those with previous colorectal polyps, inflammatory diseases such as ulcerative colitis
Finally, tertiary prevention is called clinical prevention, which is mainly symptomatic treatment and rehabilitation measures. For gastric cancer patients, tertiary prevention can no longer be called prevention, but only the use of existing gastric cancer treatment to improve the quality of survival and prolong the life of patients, and to save gastric cancer patients from the root can only be said to be “intentional but powerless”. Therefore, it is important for public health to popularize the concept of primary and secondary prevention, “early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment”, and encourage gastroscopy screening and early diagnosis.