Why is colon cancer difficult to diagnose at an early stage? Reminder: 3 symptoms teach you to identify its 'camouflage'!
In China, about 560,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer every year, and nearly 300,000 people will die of colorectal cancer!
The so-called colorectal cancer, including colon and rectal cancer, two categories, although the incidence of colon cancer is not as good as the latter, but its mortality rate is quite high. This is so because the early symptoms of colon cancer are not typical, and patients can have no symptoms at all. Even if there are symptoms, the symptoms are similar to those of hemorrhoids, appendicitis, and ulcerative colitis.
Moreover, the location of the colon is very special, and it is often difficult to detect through digital rectal examination. And because of the patient's fear of colonoscopy, digital examination and other methods, many patients often arbitrarily believe that they are suffering from common diseases even if they have symptoms, and instead of seeking medical examinations, they buy medicines casually. Missed the best time to diagnose colon cancer.
When patients have obvious symptoms, or even sudden intestinal obstruction, intestinal perforation and other serious problems, they have already missed the best golden treatment period. , even in just a few months, 1-3 years, died of colon cancer.
So the question is, colon cancer is so terrible, what symptoms can it be related to?
1. Changes in bowel habits
After cancer cells in the colon form tumors, they often change the normal secretion of the intestinal mucosa, and at the same time, the tumor continues to grow, which will stimulate the intestinal tract and disrupt the normal peristaltic rhythm of the intestinal tract.
Therefore, patients will experience changes in bowel habits during the development of the disease. For example, the original defecation habit of once a day has gradually changed , the bowel movement has become more and more frequent, there is a sense of incomplete defecation, tenesmus and other symptoms .
In the initial stage, the patient may also have pseudodiarrhea after getting up in the morning, and the excretion of stool is not formed , which is mixed with a large amount of mucus;
2. Constipation occurs
Although the initial symptoms of patients with increased stool frequency, diarrhea and other symptoms, but as the disease progresses, this situation will gradually change.
Because the cancer continues to grow, it will invade the original space in the intestine, making the intestinal lumen more and more narrow, especially the cancerous changes that appear at the junction of the sigmoid colon and rectum, which are basically stenotic hard cancers. It may cause intestinal obstruction , followed by symptoms such as thin stools, difficulty in defecation, and constipation .
The stools discharged by the patient can appear as thin strips and flat strips, and sometimes there may be sunken marks and blood marks on one side of the stool;
3. Blood in the stool
It can be said that blood in the stool is the most typical symptom of rectal cancer and colon cancer, but it is often mistaken for hemorrhoids by patients, and then the examination is ignored.
As everyone knows, there is a clear difference between colon cancer blood in the stool and hemorrhoid blood in the stool, because the blood in the stool of the patient is basically a mixture of stool and blood .
With less bleeding, patients may pass black tarry stools. In advanced bowel cancer, stools with blood clots and necrotic tissue may be passed .
In fact, it is not difficult to see from the above symptoms that the performance of colon cancer is indeed easy to be confused with other diseases.
Therefore, what everyone needs to do is not to relax their vigilance, but to seek medical attention in a timely manner when similar symptoms occur, especially after repeated blood in the stool, including digital examination, fecal occult blood test, colonoscopy, etc., after confirming the cause of the symptoms , and then start targeted therapy.