What are the characteristics and treatment methods of common gastric cancer in middle-aged and elderly people?

Disease Overview Gastric cancer is one of the common tumors in China, and the number of people suffering from gastric cancer accounts for the first place in the whole digestive system, and most of them are elderly people, and men are three times more than women.

The characteristics of the disease and the early symptoms of gastric cancer are not obvious. Mostly indigestion after meals, loss of appetite, mild pain, fullness and discomfort in the upper abdomen. Therefore, patients go to internal medicine first, and inexperienced doctors can easily be misdiagnosed as "indigestion", "ulcer disease" and "chronic gastritis". After several months or half a year of drug treatment, the condition did not improve, and when further examination was made, there was already the origin of gastric cancer. When they turn to surgery, cancer often invades other organs and loses surgery.

The symptoms of gastric cancer are closely related to the growth position of cancer in the stomach. If cancer occurs in the cardia (the entrance of the stomach), its symptoms are similar to esophageal cancer, and it is difficult to eat or even swallow. If cancer occurs in the pylorus (the outlet of the stomach), symptoms such as fullness and vomiting after meals may occur. When it happens in a small bend, it will cause pain and nausea and vomiting. If gastric cancer grows in the body of the stomach, the symptoms will appear later because there is more room for development.

The symptoms of gastric cancer are different with the depth of gastric wall invasion. For example, the tumor is very small, only invading mucosa and submucosa, and there may be no obvious symptoms. If it goes deep, it can rot through blood vessels, causing hematemesis and tarry black stool. If the whole stomach wall rots and the stomach contents flow into the abdominal cavity, the symptoms of acute peritonitis may appear due to the stimulation of the peritoneum, such as severe pain in the upper abdomen, which makes you afraid to take a deep breath, and the abdominal wall is as hard as a board and your hands are afraid to touch it. At this time, we should be sent to the hospital for surgery immediately, so that there is hope of saving lives.

For example, gastric cancer cells pass through lymph and blood to other important organs of the body, such as liver, lung, bone, kidney, brain, etc., and multiply and grow, which can cause many symptoms in other related parts and make the whole body worse and worse. At this time, the lesion has reached the advanced stage, and there is nothing the operation can do.

Most patients with gastric cancer have a long history of gastritis, gastric ulcer, low or no gastric acid, so the elderly with these symptoms for a long time should go to the hospital for examination in time. The commonly used examination methods are gastrointestinal radiography, that is, letting patients swallow barium sulfate for X-ray fluoroscopy or photography, or detecting the acidity of gastric juice and whether there is occult blood in stool, which is of certain value for diagnosis. If the exfoliated cells in the stomach wall can find cancer cells, the diagnosis can be made.

At present, fiber gastroscope can directly observe, take photos and biopsy, which greatly improves the diagnostic rate of early gastric cancer.

Treatment principles The treatment of gastric cancer mainly depends on surgery, and early resection has good effect. Chemical drugs such as 5- fluorouracil, zilmycin, camptothecin, etc. have certain effects on auxiliary surgical measures or the treatment of advanced patients. Traditional Chinese medicines such as rattan pear root, Sarcandra glabra and Hedyotis diffusa have short-term curative effects, but the control time is not long.

The primary measures to prevent gastric cancer are: paying attention to oral hygiene, developing good eating habits and not drinking too much, which can reduce the occurrence of gastritis and gastric ulcer. Because both inert gastritis and gastric ulcer are likely to become cancerous, patients with gastric ulcer, atrophic gastritis and multiple polyps in the stomach who have not been cured for a long time should often go to the hospital for reexamination. If you have doubts about malignancy, you should have surgery as soon as possible.