The high-risk groups for gastric cancer in China generally include.
①over 40 years old, with previous chronic gastric disease and recent indigestion.
②Patients with gastric cancer or other digestive tract cancers in their family.
③have previous gastric disease, especially chronic gastric ulcer, gastric polyp, atrophic gastritis, gastrectomy, etc. for more than 10 years.
④Have H. pylori infection.
⑤Unexplained vomiting of blood, coffee-colored vomit or tarry stools with weight loss.
(6) Had acid reflux and heartburn, but now the symptoms suddenly disappeared.
(7) Born in a high incidence area of gastric cancer or have lived in a high incidence area for a long time.
(8) Have suffered from other tumors.
⑨People who like excessively salty food, including pickled and smoked food, long-term alcoholism and smoking, and people who eat less fresh vegetables.
⑩People who are mentally stimulated and depressed.
How to detect gastric cancer in early stage?
In early and middle stages, patients with gastric cancer have relatively good treatment effect, but the prognosis is worse in late stages. Therefore, if detected early and diagnosed early, radical resection is possible and the chance of cure is relatively higher. The 5-year survival rate of early gastric cancer is over 85-90%. The earlier the stage of gastric cancer, the greater the chance of cure.
How to detect gastric cancer in early stage? Nearly half of gastric cancer patients have no clinical symptoms in early stage, only some of them will suffer from mild indigestion, epigastric pain, slight fullness, pain, nausea, belching, etc. However, these symptoms are not unique to gastric cancer, but also appear in patients with chronic gastritis, ulcer disease, functional dyspepsia and even normal people, which makes early diagnosis of gastric cancer more difficult. As the disease progresses, patients will gradually show the following symptoms, and then they need to undergo relevant examinations.
(1) Loss of appetite and feeling of fullness in the upper abdomen, which are often the first symptoms of stomach cancer.
② Nausea and vomiting. Early stage gastric cancer patients may occasionally experience nausea. If vomiting has already occurred, the tumor has often caused obstruction of the cardia or pylorus (i.e. the entrance and exit of the stomach).
③ Pain in upper abdomen, which is the most common symptom of gastric cancer, is not serious at the beginning and comes and goes without regularity. If there was no gastric disease but now there is often vague pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen, or if patients who had ulcer disease have changed the pattern of vague pain in the upper abdomen compared with the original one, it is necessary to be alert. When the disease develops further, the pain will become frequent and sometimes even persistent.
④ Stomach bleeding. Some patients with stomach cancer have stomach bleeding in early stage, but the bleeding volume is small, no vomiting of blood, and the stool form and color are normal to the naked eye, so they often do not pay much attention to it, and many patients will show long-standing anemia, weakness and emaciation. When the cancer tissue involves blood vessels, vomiting blood and tarry stools may appear, and it is not easy to stop the bleeding at this time.
⑤ Unexplained diarrhea, constipation, anemia and emaciation should be taken seriously.
(6) Lymph node metastasis and organ metastasis will appear in the advanced stage of gastric cancer. Left supraclavicular metastasis is a more common sign in advanced gastric cancer patients, and ovarian metastasis and pelvic implantation may also occur in female patients. During the physical examination, attention should be paid to check the common metastatic sites. In addition to ovarian tumors, women should also consider the possibility of metastasis of gastrointestinal tumors such as gastric cancer to ovaries.
What are the treatment methods of gastric cancer?
Surgery is the first choice of treatment for gastric cancer and the only means to cure gastric cancer at present. Patients with early gastric cancer should build up confidence and not miss the opportunity of early surgery.
Chemotherapy should be performed after radical surgery for gastric cancer. Through postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy, subclinical metastases that may exist after radical surgery are dealt with in order to prevent recurrence and improve the curative effect. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is given before surgery and has the following advantages.
①Preventing postoperative tumor blood supply alteration from affecting the chemotherapy effect.
②Prevent the removal of primary tumor to stimulate the growth of remaining tumor.
③To make the tumor down-stage and improve the tumor resection rate.
④Reduce intraoperative dissemination and eliminate potential micrometastases.
⑤ Chemotherapy sensitivity experiment to understand the sensitivity of tumor to chemotherapy drugs and reasonably select sensitive drugs.
⑥Exclude patients who are not suitable for surgical treatment. Clinical studies conducted in foreign countries have confirmed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy is helpful to the long-term survival rate of gastric cancer patients.
In addition, there are also abdominal chemotherapy, radiotherapy and postoperative immunotherapy.
Suggestions for prevention and treatment of gastric cancer
Stomach cancer poses a great danger to people’s health, how should we deal with it? At present, it is believed that gastric cancer is the result of multiple factors acting together. Therefore, the prevention and treatment of gastric cancer is firstly to try to control and exclude the known suspected cancer-causing factors, and secondly to detect early and treat timely. Specific measures are as follows.
①Strive to overcome bad dietary habits: eat less fried, baked, deep-fried and salted food, do not eat moldy food, do not smoke, drink less alcohol, and eat more fresh vegetables and fruits. Food should be stored in the refrigerator to reduce the formation of nitrosamines. Do not eat food that is too hot, do not overeat, do not eat too fast.
② Actively treat various chronic diseases of the stomach, including gastric ulcer, chronic gastritis, gastric polyps, etc. Systematic treatment of chronic gastric diseases, cured only by gastroscopy or X-ray review, can not be considered symptom relief or remission is a cure.
③The residual stomach after gastrectomy is prone to cancer, so when symptoms such as stomach pain and discomfort occur again, we should be doubly careful and promptly check, including barium meal and gastroscopy, for timely diagnosis and treatment.