"Stomach cancer" is a malignant tumor of the digestive tract that is relatively high in mainland China, and its incidence rate is second only to that of colorectal cancer.
However, due to the atypical initial symptoms of stomach cancer, patients can not even have any manifestations, so the early diagnosis rate of gastric cancer in mainland China is relatively low.
Most patients have basically reached the middle and advanced stages of the disease when they have typical symptoms, such as pain and gastrointestinal bleeding.
Because of this, although the incidence rate of gastric cancer is lower than that of colorectal cancer, its mortality rate ranks first in the malignant tumors of the digestive tract.
Many people are affected by the gastric cancer mortality data, and they mistakenly believe that stomach cancer is a disease that cannot be treated and cannot be clinically cured, and even directly equate gastric cancer and death, but is this really the case? wrong!
From a clinical point of view, the prognosis of gastric cancer is related to the pathological type and stage of gastric cancer, specific locations, treatment measures and other aspects. The malignant tumors of the stomach that are still in situ carcinoma and local invasive carcinoma can be effectively controlled after scientific and effective treatment, and even have the possibility of clinical cure.
Even if it is intermediate and advanced gastric cancer, after actively cooperating with doctors for treatment, the survival of patients will be improved to a certain extent, and the quality of life is also obviously different from that of patients who have given up treatment.
So the question is, since stomach cancer can be treated, what are the commonly used treatment methods in the clinic?
1. Surgical treatment
Surgery is a common way of clinical treatment of stomach cancer, and it is also the most important treatment method, it has two main types of clinical treatment.
The first is radical gastric cancer surgery, that is, the patient's condition is detected earlier, and the cancer foci, the infiltrated stomach wall can be removed through surgery, and even most of the stomach can be removed, and then the lymph nodes around the stomach are removed and the digestive tract is re-established according to the clinical staging standard.
The second is palliative surgery, that is, the patient's condition is found late, the primary lesion can not be removed, in order to reduce the risk of complications and reduce the patient's pain, such as gastro-jejunal anastomosis surgery, jejunotomy surgery, etc.;
2. Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy can run through the entire treatment of gastric cancer, it is mostly used for preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative treatment of radical surgery, chemotherapy can kill potential or metastatic cancer cells, shrink the cancer foci, make the surgical effect better, and reduce the chance of future cancer recurrence.
Even for patients who have lost the opportunity to operate, appropriate chemotherapy can delay the development of tumors, improve patients' discomfort symptoms, and have a certain short-term treatment effect.
Therefore, chemotherapy is also the most common clinical method used to treat stomach cancer. As far as the current clinical technology is concerned, there are four main routes of administration of chemotherapy for common gastric cancer, namely oral administration, intravenous injection, intraperitoneal administration, and arterial intubation area perfusion.
Finally, it should be emphasized that in fact, in the clinic, in addition to the above two treatment methods, there are many treatment methods for gastric cancer that can be chosen, including targeted therapy and immunotherapy newly developed in recent years.
Even stomach cancer patients who have entered the terminal stage can also choose supportive treatment, hospice care, etc., which can not only alleviate the pain of patients, but also appropriately extend the survival of patients, so that patients have a dignified death.