According to a team of Canadian scientists, many patients with colorectal cancer went to an emergency department because of two specific symptoms. Which ones?
What is colorectal cancer?
The colon and rectum are part of our digestive tract. Their function is to complete digestion and then evacuate fecal matter.
Colorectal cancer forms slowly, inside the colon or rectum, from small precancerous lesions called polyps. Confirmation of the diagnosis of colorectal cancer is based on pathological examination of biopsies.. It is an adenocarcinoma in more than 90% of cases.
In France, 47,582 new cases of colorectal cancers were diagnosed in 2023, including 55% in men and 45% in women.. Nearly 17,000 patients have died from this disease (53% are men) (INCa2024).
What are the symptoms of colorectal cancer?
Cancer can cause many symptoms. The main warning signs are:
- Unexplained weight loss
- Digestive disorders with disturbed transit
- Chronic fatigue
- Night sweats
- Loss of appetite
- Unusual and persistent pain
Patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer went to the emergency room because of two specific symptoms!
A Canadian study, published in the Journal of the Medical Associationwas carried out on more than 650,000 patients diagnosed with cancer between 2014 and 2021 in Ontario, shows that 35% (229,683) of them had gone to the emergency room in the 90 days preceding diagnosis due to intestinal obstruction and abdominal pain.
The problem, according to Dr. Keerat Grewal, the lead author of the study, is that emergency departments are not equipped to care for patients with a suspected cancer diagnosis.
« Patients should therefore consult an appropriate specialist, an oncologist or a gastroenterologist, as emergency departments are usually overloaded and offer limited privacy,” he explains.
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