Aunt Wang from Hunan began to have symptoms such as fullness and discomfort, indigestion, and epigastric pain 2 years ago, and began to pay no attention to them. I have had two gastroscopies in the past decade, the most recent one being five years ago, and nothing unusual was found. In October 2020, Aunt Wang, who was 61 years old at the time, found stomach cancer during a physical examination at the Second People's Hospital of Hunan Province (Hunan Provincial Brain Hospital). After undergoing surgical resection and a series of radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments, she returned to housework in 2021. At the beginning of this year, Aunt Wang unfortunately relapsed and died. From the time of diagnosis to death, it took just over a year.
During this period, Aunt Wang often records her life and treatment experience through the circle of friends, Aunt Wang's hair has fallen out, and people have lost weight, although they are basically optimistic, but they also occasionally sigh regret: Can I find stomach cancer like this earlier?
"I know that my stomach cancer in the corner of the stomach, has metastasized and spread to the surrounding lymph, and even some of the more distant lymph, after learning about it, many relatives and friends around me were shocked, and many people also thought of themselves." At our age, it would be nice to be able to detect such a disease earlier, and can stomach cancer be detected earlier? ”
Zhou Yan, chief physician of the Department of Gastroenterology of the Second People's Hospital of Hunan Province (Hunan Provincial Brain Hospital), introduced that due to diet, living habits and other reasons, most of the new stomach cancer cases in the world every year come from East Asia, of which China, Japan and South Korea are particularly serious. However, in Japan and South Korea, 70% of patients diagnosed with gastric cancer are in the early stage, while in the mainland, more than 70% of gastric cancer patients are already in the middle and advanced stages (that is, the advanced stage) when they are first diagnosed, and only more than 20% of early gastric cancer patients.
"This is also the result of the popularization of early diagnosis and early treatment in recent years, five years ago, the diagnosis rate of early stage patients with stomach cancer in the mainland was only 10%. This is mainly due to the lack of attention to early preventive screening and the resistance to gastroscopy.
Because early gastric cancer basically has no symptoms, gastroscopy is the most effective means of early screening of gastric cancer, the current gastroscopy resolution is very high, can find very small lesions, and 'painless gastroscopy' basically has no discomfort, so it is recommended that high-risk groups and middle-aged and elderly people can develop the habit of doing gastroscopy regularly. ”
Who should screen early? How to screen early?
1. 40 years old or older, and meet any of the following conditions: high incidence of gastric cancer (northwest, southeast coastal areas of China), positive Helicobacter pylori (Hp), history of stomach disease, first-degree immediate family members with history of gastric cancer, high-salt diet, it is recommended to do gastroscopy every 1-2 years, or follow the doctor's advice.
2, if it is the general population, it is also recommended to do a gastroscopy once every 3-5 years: because the incidence of gastric cancer in the mainland has been very high, and more than 80% of early gastric cancer has no symptoms, it is difficult to detect early, and sometimes even symptoms appear, if you do not do gastroscopy, it is easy to delay diagnosis.
3. If the following stomach cancer alarm symptoms have appeared, they should seek medical treatment in time: such as loss of appetite (can not eat), inexplicable weight loss, weakness, abdominal pain, heartburn and other stomach pain symptoms or changes in symptom traits, there is a history of gastric ulcers suddenly aggravated symptoms; gastrointestinal bleeding (hematemesis, black stool).
The gold standard or the most effective means of diagnosing gastric cancer is gastroscopy + biopsy. The late detection of gastric cancer is mainly due to the lack of two links: the first is that symptoms such as fullness and discomfort, indigestion, and epigastric pain are not carried out early to exclude gastric cancer; the second is that gastroscopy is not done regularly, even if there is no symptom, gastroscopy screening should be routinely performed for high-risk groups.
Finally, experts remind: change your living habits as soon as possible, eat a low-salt diet, do not smoke and drink, eat more fresh vegetables and fruits, and control your weight.
Contributed by: Department of Gastroenterology, Second People's Hospital of Hunan Province (Hunan Brain Hospital), Xu Ruosi, Liu Shuang
Editor: Liu Yuchen
Image: From the Internet, intrusion and deletion