Harianjogja.com, JAKARTA – Diseases of the stomach are often ignored and considered harmless. Even though it could be that the disease currently being suffered is stomach cancer.
The early signs of stomach cancer are rarely detected by patients, because most patients mistake the symptoms for heartburn.
Chairman of the Indonesian Cancer Foundation, Aru Sudoyo said stomach cancer is often mistaken for heartburn or gastritis, because it tends to have no symptoms at an early stage, so most patients arrive late and are already at an advanced stage.
Aru Sudoyo explained that the risk factors for gastric cancer are only 5-10 percent due to genetic factors. While 90-95 percent more is caused by environmental factors which include diet (30-35 percent), smoking (25-30 percent), infection (15-20 percent), obesity (10-20 percent), alcohol (4-6 percent). ) and others (10-15 percent).
“Thus, cancer can be prevented with a healthy lifestyle and early detection of cancer,” said Aru in an online discussion, Monday (16/11/2020).
He further explained that the risk factors for stomach cancer are mostly suffered by patients aged 60-80 years and are caused by Helicobactor pylori, smoking, obesity, processed or salted foods, and genetics.
“The cause of the increased risk of gastric cancer is medical conditions due to infection with helicobacter pylori in the stomach, intestinal metaplasia, chronic atrophic gastritis, pernicious anemia, or gastric polyps,” he explained.
Meanwhile, genetically, the cause of increased risk is if the mother, father, brother or sister has gastric cancer, blood type A, Li-fraumeni syndrome, familial adenomatous polypsis (FAP) and hereditary nonpolyposis colon cancer.
He further said that diagnosis and therapy at an early stage is certainly expected to have a better severity and prognosis than if it was detected and treated when it had entered an advanced stage.
For this reason, it is very important to recognize the symptoms of gastric disorders that must be watched out for and followed up, whether in the form of common stomach disease commonly known as dyspepsia syndrome or leading to malignancy or stomach cancer.
Aru explained that there are six situations that need to be watched out for as symptoms of stomach cancer. Here are some situations to look out for:
1. The presence of abdominal pain, namely abdominal or abdominal pain that initially feels mild, but due to busyness, it is not noticed, and does not go away with eating, so that over time the pain gets worse until it is unbearable. “The most frequent symptoms of gastric cancer (between 60-90 percent) are similar to heartburn,” said Aru.
2. A person begins to have difficulty swallowing food, and this occurs when the tumor is located in the upper cardia area, there will be a narrowing, where the food feels “stuck” in the chest area, is forced to drink a lot of water, but then it rises back up or is also called with “gastroesophageal reflux” or gerd.
3. Nausea and vomiting at mealtime. This occurs when the tumor is located close to the entrance to the small intestine or pylorus. The resistance of the passage of food sends a signal to the brain that the food “has to get back up”.
4. The more you feel full faster with the stomach space filled by tumors, so that less food enters the body. This occurs especially in “diffuse” type of gastric cancer where the tumor cells take up a large surface area of the stomach, where the elasticity of the stomach is reduced.
5. There is a drastic weight loss, either because it is difficult for food to go down or because of vomiting, as well as reduced food and nutrition.
6. Begins to bleed, where the tumor or cancer penetrates the inner lining of the stomach. If the bleeding is still a little, there will be no symptoms. However, in large bleeding, resulting in upper or lower hematemesis melena with symptoms of anemia.
“By being aware of the symptoms of gastric cancer, people are expected to immediately detect cancer so that it can be cured at an early stage,” concluded Aru.
Doctor Ervina Hasti Widyandini added that in order not to be late in early detection of cancer, people need to be aware of the common symptoms of cancer, such as lumps, weakness and lethargy, weight loss drastically, pain that does not go away, chapters change patterns, voice becomes bindeng or hoarseness, lust. loss of eating, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, enlarged and inflamed moles, bleeding at unusual or prolonged periods, and bleeding coughs.
Source: Bisnis.com
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