signs of colon cancer | COLON CANCER: SYMPTOMS, SIGNS AND DIAGNOSIS

COLON CANCER: SYMPTOMS, SIGNS AND DIAGNOSIS




Symptoms of colon cancer depend on the stage and location of the neoplasm.

Right colon: the right colon (from the cecum to the proximal transverse) has a rather large lumen and essentially liquid content; the lesions that develop at this level are characteristically vegetating (reminiscent of a cauliflower), often large and easily bleeding. In the right colon the symptoms are later, because the patient does not notice the bleeding, being mixed with the feces that are not yet well formed here. The first sign may be anemia, due to the constant loss of small quantities of blood, and a positivity to the search for occult blood in the stool. Anemia involves a feeling of fatigue, fatigue, unexplained weight loss and air hunger (dyspnoea) with a feeling of trouble even for light efforts. Other symptoms may be pain, of a gravitational type, not very intense, discontinuous, localized in the right abdominal quadrants, and the presence of a palpable mass which, naturally located in the right anemia, is a fairly frequent indication of advanced situations and now incurable.




Left colon: the material that crosses the left colon (from the transverse to the sigma) is instead more solid because the feces have already formed and the tumors of these seats are, mostly, infiltrating (early infiltrate the various layers of the wall intestinal); for these reasons, and also because of the smaller diameter of this visceral district, the observation of a symptomatology due to the presence of an "obstacle" is frequent. The onset can be given by an acute bleeding that tends to repeat itself, and can be mixed with the feces or separated from them, visible very often on the toilet paper, due to the fact that the neoplasm infiltrates the wall prematurely, therefore it precociously damages the vessels blood contained in it and causes bleeding. Blood can often be mixed with mucus. There may also be constipation alternating with diarrhea (alterations of the alve), every other day or hours, an abdominal discomfort that recalls a vague sensation of weight and pain in the left abdominal quadrants and an unpleasant and persistent feeling of incomplete evacuation of the feces (rectal tenesmus) with alterations of their caliber that make them appear to be "tape-like" or "to cut", especially in tumors of the rectum. Also in the latter, we can find burning and anal itching, a sensation of weight and a foreign body at a rectal level. The appearance of a palpable abdominal mass or symptoms such as cramping pain, and urinary and genital disorders are later symptoms.
Right and left: typical above all of the advanced phases, they can be caused by nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite (anorexia), significant weight loss without apparent cause and a general decay of physical conditions.
The distant metastases that this type of cancer can give are mainly to the liver, brain and bones.

Diagnosis
A very important guiding criterion is provided by the patient's account of the symptomatology he is accusing of; rectal exploration should not be omitted to exclude hemorrhoids or anal fissures, as well as to possibly palpate the tumors of the rectum. Any microscopic bleeding not visible to the naked eye can be revealed by the examination of the occult blood research in the faeces. The diagnosis of certainty is in any case provided by the colonoscopy, which allows to directly visualize the tumor lesion, to remove a sample for the histological examination under the microscope and to remove any benign polyps without the need for surgery.

Ultrasound and abdominal CT scan: they are above all significant for documenting possible distant disseminations and in particular at the hepatic level while they play a limited role for diagnostic purposes.