Stomach cancer (gastric cancer)

Abdomen | Oncology | Stomach cancer (gastric cancer) (Disease)


Description

Gastric cancer is a malignancy that start in the gastric mucosa, representing one of the most common sites of visceral malignancies, being on the second most common after lung neoplasms. Worldwide distribution is variable, the most encountered in Japan, China, Eastern Europe.

Cancer that occurs in the stomach is called gastric cancer. Gastric cancer is a malignant disease in which cancer cells appear in the gastric mucosa and then extend beyond the gastric wall. Most common histological type of gastric cancer is adenocarcinoma.

Initial symptoms of gastric cancer are nonspecific, it is often suggestive of peptic ulcer dyspepsia. Patients and doctors tend not to give due weight to symptoms and treat them as an acid condition. Later, early feeling of fullness may occur if the cancer blocks the pyloric region or if the stomach is no longer relax secondary to the tumor. Weight loss, usually due to diet, hematemesis and melena are rare, but occult bleeding secondary anemia is often present.

Causes and Risk factors

The incidence is higher in males and the mean age at occurrence is 70 years in men and 75 women.

Numerous experimental studies, clinical and epidemiological intervention demonstrates the many risk factors that can act simultaneously or successively. Food is one of the most important environmental factors involved in the pathogenesis of gastric cancer. Consumption of foods preserved by drying and smoke, excess salt, transforming nitrates to nitrites N-nitroso compounds formation-nitrosamide and nitrosamines, lower daily intake of dietary fiber, low intake of selenium are sources of carcinogens.

Diagnosis and Treatment

Patients suspected of gastric cancer requires endoscopy, multiple biopsies and cytological examination. Those who had neoplasm requires examination revealed chest and abdominal CT to determine tumor extension.

Prognosis depends on tumor stage of gastric cancer but is usually negative, 5-year survival rate is 5-10%. Early gastric cancer is characterized by limiting muscle lining the tumor process, with or without affecting the mucosa, with or without lymph node metastases, with a 5-year survival between 79-94%.

Stomach cancer may be treated with the following, in combination, or alone: surgery, called gastrectomy, to remove all or part of the stomach, as well as some of the tissue surrounding the stomach; chemotherapy; radiation therapy. ...