What are the examination items for colorectal cancer

We all know that if you are unfortunately diagnosed with colorectal cancer, the symptoms you show are very obvious. To truly diagnose colorectal cancer, you need to go to a regular hospital for examination to better diagnose the disease. At the same time, patients must strengthen their confidence in treating the disease. First of all, you must understand that colorectal cancer can be cured. So let's learn about the examination and diagnosis of colorectal cancer.

1. Medical history

A detailed medical history can often reveal the diagnosis of colorectal cancer. For those who are middle-aged or older and have unexplained weight loss, anemia, changes in bowel habits, mucus in stool, blood in stool, intestinal obstruction, etc., the possibility of colorectal cancer should be considered. In order to detect colorectal cancer early, some people who have no obvious symptoms but have risk factors for colorectal cancer, such as those with a family history of colorectal cancer, those who have suffered from multiple polyposis of the colon, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, chronic schistosomiasis, or those who have received pelvic radiotherapy or cholecystectomy, should be followed up and reexamined regularly.

2. Physical Examination

A comprehensive physical examination not only helps to correctly diagnose colorectal cancer, but also can estimate the severity of the disease, the invasion and metastasis of cancer, and serve as a reference for formulating a reasonable treatment plan. Local signs should pay special attention to intestinal obstruction, abdominal mass and abdominal tenderness. Since the vast majority of colorectal cancer occurs in the rectum and sigmoid colon, a rectal digital examination is essential. Whenever a patient has symptoms such as blood in the stool, changes in bowel habits, and deformed stools, a rectal digital examination should be performed.

3. Evaluation of early diagnosis of colorectal cancer and population screening

As mentioned above, the incidence of colorectal cancer is increasing year by year, the mortality rate is high, and the 5-year survival rate is closely related to the Dukes stage. Since the cause of colorectal cancer is unknown, the improvement of survival rate depends on secondary prevention, that is, early diagnosis of colorectal cancer. Early diagnosis includes two meanings: one is early detection, and the other is early diagnosis.

4. Fecal occult blood test

Since colorectal cancer often presents with varying degrees of bleeding due to mucosal erosion and ulceration, a simple and easy fecal occult blood test can be used to monitor colorectal cancer. Early fecal occult blood tests were chemical colorimetric methods, and commonly used reagents were benzidine or guaiac. In recent years, they have gradually been replaced by more specific immune occult blood reagents. However, since fecal occult blood tests cannot distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous bleeding, they are currently mostly used as a preliminary screening method for large-scale population colorectal cancer surveys. However, a few early cancers may also show false negative results and lead to missed diagnosis.