Why is rectal cancer easily misdiagnosed?

  According to the statistics, the misdiagnosis rate of rectal cancer is 30%, which must be paid great attention by medical personnel. The reasons for misdiagnosis are many.   Rectal cancer is most likely to be misdiagnosed as bleeding internal hemorrhoids, bleeding polyps, bacterial dysentery, amoebic dysentery, rectal inflammation, etc. 70% of patients have been treated for enteritis and hemorrhoids before being diagnosed with rectal cancer, and 40% of patients have had surgical treatment for hemorrhoids, which are alarming figures.  The high rate of misdiagnosis of rectal cancer is mainly due to the lack of vigilance of rectal cancer patients under 30 years of age, limited to partial examination results, or no further examination after examination to “hemorrhoids”, and failure to treat precancerous lesions in the rectum, such as polyps and ulcers, which develop into cancer. In particular, many of these diseases are missed and misdiagnosed due to the lack of rectal examination. Rectal diagnosis is the most important method to diagnose rectal cancer, and more than 80% of rectal cancers can be palpated during rectal diagnosis.  Another important reason for misdiagnosis is that young adults are not alert enough to blood in stool, change of stool habit, anemia and loss of appetite, and young adults’ colorectal cancer is often characterized by high malignancy, fast development of disease and obvious regional lymph node metastasis, etc., which has poor prognosis. Therefore, once misdiagnosed, it will bring extremely serious consequences to patients.  What are the danger signs?  1.Unexplained anemia 2.Sudden weight loss 3.Distension, abdominal pain, indigestion, loss of appetite 4.Lumps in the anus or abdomen 5.Blood in the stool or black stool 6.Pus and blood in the stool or mucus and blood 7.Changes in stool habits, increased frequency or diarrhea, urgency and heaviness 8.Diarrhea and constipation alternately 9.Changes in the shape of stool, thinning, flattening or grooved 10.Finding multiple polyps, or papillary adenomas.