Five major diagnostic tests for colon cancer

Colon cancer has an insidious onset, often with no obvious clinical manifestations in the early stages, and the disease progresses slowly. By the time obvious symptoms appear, it is usually in the middle or late stages. In general, the occurrence of colon cancer is most closely related to the spread of other cancer cells, because colon cancer is a type of intestinal cancer. It is known that colon cancer is caused by the spread of intestinal cancer cells.

Clinical diagnosis 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 tumors. The initial signs of the disease may be intestinal wall stiffness and mucosal destruction, followed by constant filling defects and intestinal stenosis. Double contrast examination of air-barium is more effective.

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.

The early symptoms of colon cancer are often not noticed by patients, and when seeking medical treatment, they are often treated as "dysentery", "enteritis" and other diseases. Once symptoms of poisoning or obstruction appear and an abdominal mass is felt, it is no longer in the early stages. Therefore, if the patient has changes in bowel habits without special causes, persistent diarrhea or constipation; frequent bowel movements, stools with pus, blood, mucus, or blood in the stool; or persistent abdominal pain, bloating, and abdominal discomfort, and general treatment is ineffective, further examination should be performed.