What are the early symptoms of gastric cancer?

Early gastric cancer often has no obvious symptoms. As the disease progresses, nonspecific symptoms similar to gastritis or gastric ulcer may appear, including upper abdominal distension and pain, heartburn, belching, nausea, occasional vomiting, anorexia, black stools, etc. Common early manifestations of gastric cancer are as follows:

(1) Anorexia: Early gastric cancer often presents with anorexia and loss of appetite, which is different from hepatitis. Hepatitis has systemic symptoms such as increased transaminase, fever, fatigue, and jaundice.

(2) Upper abdominal discomfort and fullness : The abdomen often has burning, noisy, and fullness, especially after meals. As the disease progresses, the symptoms become more and more severe. These symptoms are different from indigestion and chronic gastritis. Indigestion often has a history of eating the wrong food and overeating, while chronic gastritis has a history of recurrent attacks.

(3) Nausea, belching, acid reflux and vomiting: Gastric cancer lesions are located at the pylorus at the outlet of the stomach, and nausea is most obvious. If the outlet of the stomach is completely blocked, it will emit a sour or eggy odor, or vomit, and the vomitus is mainly night food and gastric juice.

(4) Upper abdominal tenderness: The pain of early gastric cancer is irregular or continuous, but it is not characterized by pain after or before meals, such as gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer. If the patient thinks of gastric and duodenal ulcer disease, the pain pattern will suddenly change, and the effective drugs for ulcer disease will suddenly become ineffective or the efficacy will be significantly reduced.

(5) Rapid weight loss and severe anemia : Cancer is a wasting disease. Gastric cancer can cause patients to suffer from malabsorption, gastrointestinal bleeding, and weight loss and anemia can become more severe.

(6) Vomiting blood and black stools: If the cancer only destroys small blood vessels, it often manifests as "occult blood" in the stool, that is, the stool looks normal, but there are blood cells in the stool. If larger blood vessels are destroyed in the early stage, it will cause vomiting blood and the stool will be black or tarry. If gastric cancer occult blood and black stools persist, and gastric and duodenal ulcers bleed intermittently, timely treatment can stop the bleeding.

(7) Unexplained fatigue, weight loss or progressive anemia: The patient suffers from general fatigue and gradually loses weight. Within 2-3 months, the patient will lose 3-5 kg.

(8) The pain pattern of primary chronic gastric disease has changed: for example, the original pain on an empty stomach or after meals has obvious regularity, the regularity disappears recently, or the original effective treatment drugs are ineffective.

(9) Signs of early gastric cancer: There are no obvious signs. Most patients only have deep tenderness in the upper abdomen or mild increased muscle tension.

( 10) Paraneoplastic syndrome: Paraneoplastic syndrome first occurs in gastric cancer and mainly includes: ① recurrent thrombophlebitis; ② acanthosis nigricans, skin pigmentation, especially in the axilla; ③ dermatomyositis, etc.

The above are the early symptoms of gastric cancer, which remind patients that if the patient’s condition is very serious, they must be treated as soon as possible to avoid delaying the best time for treatment.