Indigestion or Pain in your stomach? Do not neglect, it may sometimes be a serious matter.
Stomach cancer is one such serious matter which is diagnosed at an advanced stage each time in each case.
Feeling full after eating only a small meal, heartburn, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and difficulty swallowing, indigestion are its common symptoms more often mistaken as general stomach disorders.
Despite a marked decline in the incidence of stomach cancer in many industrialized nations, it is the second most common cause of cancer-related death in the world. Gosh!!
Also many Asian countries, including Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan, have very high rates of Stomach cancer. In the United States, more than 22,000 new cases are to be diagnosed this year making Stomach cancer the fourteenth most common cancer in this country.
Unfortunately, stomach cancer remains a difficult disease to cure in Western countries, primarily because most patients present with advanced disease.
Under most favorable condition also patients who undergo curative surgical resection often die of recurrent disease. A recent randomized study demonstrates a survival benefit with postoperative chemoradiotherapy.
Now, let’s look into its 5-year survival rate. The 5-year survival rate for curative surgical resection ranges from 30-50% for patients with stage II disease and from 10-25% for patients with stage III disease.
The operative mortality rate for patients undergoing curative surgical resection at major academic centers is less than 3%. Because these patients have a high likelihood of local and systemic relapse, some physicians offer them adjuvant therapy.
The occurrence of Stomach Cancer depends on various factors like
- Race: Japan developed a very rigorous early screening program that detects patients with early stage disease. This is called the low tumor burden. The rates of stomach cancer are higher in Asian countries than in the United States. Patients with resected stage II and III disease tend to have better outcomes than similarly staged patients treated in Western countries, these patients appear to do quite well in many Asian studies. Some researchers suggest that this reflects a fundamental biologic difference between the disease as it manifests in Asia and in Western countries.
- Sex: Stomach cancer afflicts slightly more men than women.
- Age: Most patients are elderly at diagnosis. The median age at diagnosis is 65 years (range 40-70 y). The stomach cancers that occur in younger patients may represent a more aggressive variant.
Diagnosis involves Clinical Presentation of Diagnostic Studies including the Tumor Markers Screening Staging.
If you want to know about the stomach cancer treatment methods available you need to keep in mind that treatment depends on various factors including the patient condition, overall health, stage of stomach cancer and many other reasons.
Surgery, Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy are the most common methods used for treatment in various combinations depending on the patient requirement.
Stomach Cancer Research highlights shows that perioperative chemotherapy prolongs survival in resectable stomach cancer, compared with patients treated with surgery alone.
Benefits of perioperative chemotherapy might, however, depend on the regime chosen. So now you know how important it is to take a good proper care of your health. Eat Healthy Be Healthy!!
