Early detection and minimally invasive treatment opportunities for gastric cancer

  Fast-paced work, lunch haphazardly deal with, dinner do not know what time to eat; lose weight to starve a few days, friends a date barbecue beer an all-nighter, this may be the lifestyle of many urbanites today, stomach pain, fullness after meals, flatulence, acid reflux …… in this long-term unhealthy lifestyle, the stomach to “Uprising”.  In most cases, the tissue cell lesions of gastrointestinal cancer first originate from the innermost mucosal layer. After the inflammation to intestinalization and step by step transformation into cancer cells, they will grow outwardly infiltrating and destroy the normal body tissues, causing serious damage and then showing the typical symptoms of middle and late stage cancer.  If the level of lesion growth has not yet broken through the third submucosa layer of the canal wall, it is called early stage gastrointestinal cancer. The earlier it is detected, the less likely it is to metastasize, and patients have the opportunity to be treated through surgical procedures or even endoscopic minimally invasive treatment techniques.  Current gastric cancer treatment emphasizes a comprehensive treatment approach based on surgery, including neoadjuvant chemotherapy, intraperitoneal chemotherapy, local arterial infusion chemotherapy, etc. Early diagnosis and resection are the primary means to treat gastric cancer. Compared with patients with intermediate and advanced stages, patients with early gastric cancer can choose minimally invasive treatment, including endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) and endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), which are characterized by less damage, mild postoperative pain and quick recovery.  Meanwhile, standardized gastric cancer treatment is very important. According to statistics, among the 500,000 new gastric cancer patients in China every year, only 10% of them can receive standardized treatment, and the 5-year survival rate of this patient group can reach more than 50%, while the 5-year survival rate of patients who do not receive standardized treatment is only about 30%. Due to the difficulty of eradicating stomach tumors, patients should seek treatment from doctors in regular hospitals at the first time of onset.  Stomach cancer is fundamentally caused by “disease entering from the mouth”, and China, Japan and Korea have become the major countries with stomach cancer due to their dietary habits. In China, the diet focuses on frying and deep-frying, and some regions like to eat pickled products, and the high-salt diet damages the gastric mucosa and hurts stomach health. At present, the incidence of stomach cancer in China is distributed in a stable manner in large cities, while the incidence rate in rural areas and other areas with low economic living standards is still rising.  Because early gastric cancer symptoms are insidious and not easy to be detected, only 10% of patients in China are able to achieve early detection and early treatment. In Japan, where the prevalence of gastric cancer is also high, the early consultation rate of patients has reached 83%. Therefore, it is recommended that high-risk groups should receive gastroscopy screening.