Treatment of gastric cancer in the elderly

Treatment of gastric cancer in the elderly

Gastric cancer is a malignant tumor originating from the gastric mucosal epithelium, and its incidence ranks first among various malignant tumors in my country. Pain and weight loss are the most common clinical symptoms of progressive gastric cancer. The main treatment for gastric cancer in the elderly is surgery. Of course, there are other treatments. When choosing a treatment method, it should be selected based on comprehensive conditions.

1. Surgical treatment. Surgery is the main method for treating gastric cancer in the elderly. It is also the only way to treat gastric cancer at present. Since gastric cancer patients are hospitalized late and are older, the effect of gastric cancer surgery is not satisfactory. However, with the development of medical technology, the 5-year survival rate after radical surgery for gastric cancer has gradually increased.

2. Radiotherapy. Radiotherapy has a certain remedial value in the comprehensive treatment of gastric cancer. This is mainly because the stomach is a tumor that is not sensitive to radiation. The adjacent organs of the stomach are more sensitive to its radioactivity, so it has a certain value in comprehensive treatment.

3. Adjuvant chemotherapy for gastric cancer. Due to the biological characteristics of cancer cells, surgery cannot completely remove postoperative subclinical metastatic lesions and cancer cells. In order to avoid postoperative recurrence as much as possible, preoperative and postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy is necessary. Preoperative chemotherapy is a limitation of cancer and is conducive to resection. Intraoperative chemotherapy is mainly to eliminate residual cancer lesions. Postoperative chemotherapy is mainly to prevent recurrence and metastasis and improve the 5-year survival rate.

4. Endoscopic treatment. Endoscopic treatment can inject local tumor drugs to directly kill the tumor, which is a palliative treatment method. However, this method is prone to complications of local ulcers.

5. Traditional Chinese medicine treatment. Since gastric cancer is highly malignant, it is more common in the elderly. The elderly have a worse physique than young people and often cannot tolerate surgery, so traditional Chinese medicine treatment before and after surgery is particularly important.

The healing of gastric cancer in the elderly is related to the pathological stage, location and tissue type, biological behavior and treatment measures of gastric cancer. The healing is better after early gastric cancer treatment. Future family messengers should have regular gastric cancer physical examinations to detect and treat it as early as possible.