Recently saw a baseball video where a man had one too many hotdogs at the game which resulted in him getting stomach pain the next day. When he went to the doctor they detected cancer in him and treated him.
How is it possible to detect cancer even before the symptoms show?
In: 3
There’s a whole bunch of ways.
Some are found by accident-e.g. you have a ct scan because we think you have appendicitis (pain on the right side of your body), incidental finding of a right sided renal (kidney) tumour.
Others are part of screening, so because you hit certain triggers (usually based on age but others exist, e.g. family history or pre-existing condition) you are asked to have a test that specifically looks for cancer, the idea being that they catch it early enough to be treated (and often before symptoms exist). Bowel cancer (colonoscopy and faecal testing) and breast cancer (mammograms) are two of the most common here.
And in still others there are symptoms just the patient hadn’t noticed/attributed any importance to them and someone asks the right questions and teases it out.
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