Dull abdominal pain, indigestion eat watch out for stomach cancer

Ms. Sen came to the hospital because of dull ache in the upper abdomen, prolonged indigestion. Through colonoscopy, doctors discovered the patient's stomach had a small suspected malignant ulcer. The biopsy results determined she had stomach cancer.

After laparoscopic surgery to treat stomach cancer, the patient's health has recovered well. Photo: TH.

Master, Dr. Tran Thien Nhan, Head of Surgery Department, Da Nang Mind General Hospital, said that after the consultation, the team decided to choose a laparoscopic surgery to cut the part of the stomach to adjust. treatment for patients. The operation lasted 3 hours. Currently, Sen's health has recovered very well.

According to Dr. Nhan, stomach cancer is very common in Southeast Asian countries, especially Vietnam. In our country, the death rate from stomach cancer is 4-5 times higher than that of regional countries such as Laos, Thailand and the Philippines. The incidence of this disease in men is 59.26%, in women is 40.74%.

Surgery is the main method of treating stomach cancer. In the past, open surgery was often used. At present, gastric laparoscopic surgery with standard lymph node curettage in gastric cancer treatment is a great success of the gastrointestinal endoscopy field. However, to perform this surgery requires a hospital team of highly skilled doctors, modern equipment.

The application of laparoscopic surgery to treat gastric cancer brings more benefits to patients than open surgery. The incision is smaller, the patient has less pain after surgery, more aesthetics, faster and better recovery, shorter hospital stay, less complications of infection. The duration of treatment after surgery is shorter than open surgery from 2 to 4 days.

There are currently no studies confirming the exact causes of stomach cancer, but basically there are some factors that are considered to increase the risk of this disease:

- Eat lots of smoked and salty foods.
- Eat less fruits and vegetables.
- Family history of people with stomach cancer.
- Helicobacter pylori (HP) infection, a bacterium that lives in the mucous membrane of the stomach.
- Chronic gastritis.
- Malignant anemia, which occurs when red blood cells are severely reduced because the intestine cannot absorb vitamin B12 normally.
- Smoking habit.

In the early stages, stomach cancer has very little or almost no obvious symptoms, so it is often confused with gastrointestinal diseases or stomach pains, gastritis ... Patients may feel loss of appetite. mouth and unexplained weight loss. Sometimes, even doctors who experience this symptom do not have much suspicion of stomach cancer.

Stomach cancer is often detected late. When the patient started to show symptoms such as vomiting, black stools, the symptoms were more pronounced, and the disease became worse. Dr. Nhan recommends regular screening for gastric cancer for early detection (if any), especially for people at high risk groups such as chronic gastritis, families with people with stomach cancer, HP infection ...