What is stomach cancer?

Stomach cancer is cancer situated in the stomach. Every year 2000 people in the Netherlands are diagnosed with stomach cancer. Usually, stomach cancer is diagnosed in a late stage of the disease. 95% of the patients diagnosed with stomach cancer have a survival time of less than five years.

What is stomach cancer?

Stomach cancer is cancer situated in the stomach. When stomach cancer is diagnosed in an early disease stage, the prognosis of stomach cancer is good or even very good. Unfortunately, stomach cancer is often diagnosed in a late disease stage. Therefore, treatment often does not help and the patient does not have a good prognosis. Research shows that only 5% of all patients with stomach cancer have a life expectancy of five or more years. This means, only five in hundred people with stomach cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis.

The reason that stomach cancer is often only diagnosed in a later stage is because the complaints (symptoms) do not present themselves in an early stage. Even with palpation of the stomach, stomach ache will seldom be present. When stomach cancer is present it is often adenocarcinoma of the stomachepithelia. In some cases leiomyosarcomas and lymphomas can occur.

Who has an increased risk of stomach cancer?

It is hard to say who will get stomach cancer, but there are a few risk factors that induce a (significantly) increased risk of stomach cancer, namely:

• A Helicobacter pylori infection,
• Vitamin C deficiency
• Blood type A
• Pernicious Anemia
• Hypogammaglubolinemia
• History of (partial) gastrectomy.
• Smoking
• Salty diet
• Diets containing large amounts of smoked foods
• Obesity

Signs and symptoms of stomach cancer

Although not every patient with colon cancer has the same signs and symptoms, we can identify some very common symptoms. This does not mean that a patient has to have all symptoms to indeed have stomach cancer. Even with one of the symptoms stomach cancer could be present.

• Stomach ache. Usually the patient has a stomach ache during or after a meal. This symptom is of course aspecific and can have other causes, but it can be stomach cancer. Especially in patients of 45 and older, in which the stomach ache continues for multiple weeks, it is advised to undergo a gastroscopy.
• Bloating, nausea or vomiting. These symptoms present often only in the later stages of stomach cancer.
• Loss of appetite; often a late symptom of stomach cancer.
• Weight loss. This symptom is often combined with loss of appetite. It most often occurs in the late stages of stomach cancer.
• Hard, swollen lymph nodes at the calviculas can be a symptom of stomach cancer. If the lymph nodes feel swollen and hard, this means that there are metastases.
• Jaundice. This symptom only occurs when the biliary are occluded.

Particularly the first symptom (stomach ache) can be fairly innocent, because it is a very aspecific complaint. When the other symptoms are present, especially hard lymph nodes and jaundice, there is great chance that a patient has stomach cancer in an advanced stage.

Where does stomach cancer occur more often?

There are countries where stomach cancer occurs more often than in other countries. An example is Japan, where people eat a lot of salty and smoked foods.

Interestingly, since the end of World War II the prevalence of stomach cancer has decreased substantially. The reason for this decrease in stomach cancer prevalence is probably that fewer people get infected with the Helicobacter Pylori bacterium.

Treatment of stomach cancer

Because stomach cancer is very hard to treat, especially in later stages of the disease, there are few treatment options available. The three most common ways to treat stomach cancer are:

• Surgery (part or all of the stomach is removed)
• Radiation (radiotherapy)
• Chemotherapy. With this treatment medicines inhibiting mitosis are used to more or less increase the survival time of the patient.

Often, the doctor decides to use a combination of the above treatments. This often results in the best possible treatment effect.

Sources: www.todio.nl