How to check for colon cancer

The impact of colon cancer is unexpected for colon cancer patients. Colon cancer patients may feel that colon cancer is a minor disease, but the harm caused by colon cancer is very great. Colon cancer patients should think about timely treatment of colon cancer. Examination and diagnosis are very critical. Let us learn about the examination methods of colon cancer.

1. X-ray examination: including barium meal examination of the entire digestive tract and barium enema examination. It can observe the overall shape of the colon, whether there are multiple polyps and multiple cancer foci, and provide a basis for surgical treatment of patients with colon cancer. The initial signs of the disease may be intestinal wall stiffness and mucosal destruction, followed by constant filling defects and intestinal stenosis. The double contrast examination of air-barium is more effective. This is one of the examination methods for colon cancer.
2. Endoscopic examination: Patients with blood in stool or changes in bowel habits who have no abnormal findings in rectal examination should undergo routine fiber colonoscopy. It can not only detect various types of colon lesions, but also take tissue biopsy to confirm the diagnosis and avoid missed diagnosis or misdiagnosis.
3. Serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) test: It has no specificity for detecting and diagnosing colon cancer. Increased values ​​are often related to tumor growth. They can return to normal values ​​after complete resection of the colon tumor. They can increase several weeks before recurrence. Therefore, it is helpful for estimating prognosis, monitoring efficacy and recurrence.
4. B-ultrasound scan, CT or MRI examination: None of them can directly diagnose colon cancer, but they are valuable in determining the location, size, relationship with surrounding tissues, lymph node and liver metastasis of the tumor. They are mainly used to understand the degree of tumor infiltration into the intestine and whether there is local lymph node or distant organ metastasis. They can be used for preoperative staging and postoperative review.
5. Stool examination: By detecting tumor M2 pyruvate kinase (M2-PK) in the stool, it was found that the M2-PK value of colon cancer patients was 14 times that of normal people. Therefore, fecal tumor M2-PK detection provides a promising new method for colon cancer screening.