Stomach cancer early detection/ screening
Screening
-Tests and exams used to find a disease, such as cancer, in people who do not have any symptoms
Early detection
- Using an approach that lets stomach cancer get diagnosed earlier than otherwise might have occurred.
Can stomach cancer be found early?
-Screening is the search for disease, such as cancer, in people without symptoms.
-In countries such as Japan, where stomach cancer is very common, mass screening of the population has helped find many cases at an early, curable stage.
-This may have reduced the number of people who die of this disease, but the studies were not designed to prove this.
-Routine screening for gastric cancer is not recommended outside of a few countries with a high gastric cancer burden that have already implemented screening programs.
-The effectiveness of these programs is unclear
-Eradication of H. pylori has the potential to reduce the burden of gastric cancer, but the ideal means to implement a screening and prevention program and settings in which it would be appropriate remain unclear.
-The decision to recommend a screening program is made on an individual patient basis.
-The CA 19-9 test is sometimes used during treatment to see if the therapy is working or after treatment to see if the cancer has recurred (come back).
-Another substance, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), can help detect advanced pancreatic cancer in some people. But it isn't sensitive enough to find the cancer early and is not recommended as a screening test.
- Inherited DNA changes are thought to cause as many as 10% of pancreatic cancers.
- Because these inherited cases are sometimes linked with other cancers, determining whether a patient's relatives have an increased risk is not simple.
- Talking to someone with experience in hereditary cancer syndromes such as a genetic counselor, geneticist, or an oncologist is often helpful.
- For people in families at high risk of pancreatic cancer, there are newer tests for detecting early pancreatic cancer that may help.
- One of these is called endoscopic ultrasound
- This test is not used to screen the general public but might be used for someone with a strong family history of pancreatic cancer.
-Periodic upper endoscopy can be offered to patients who are considered to be at increased risk
www.magnahealthsolutions.com