Diagnosis of cancer of the colon consists of collecting the patient's complaints, his physical examination, laboratory data, and, most importantly, data from various instrumental methods.
History taking
History taking - it is the patient's physician survey. When they asked the patient complaints, as the disease began, learns the nature of the diet, stools, previous illness or chronic, particularly the colon, as well as figuring out whether a patient's family of persons suffering from colon cancer or polyps.
Digital rectal examination
This is the simplest and safest method of diagnosis in proctology, although a low informative, but they should not be neglected. Patients are also important to understand, despite the possible inconvenience and discomfort of the aesthetic in this study that the finger study - this is the first step towards a correct diagnosis of cancer and other diseases of the rectum and other organs. Finger study reveals a tumor in her rectum distal, and other diseases of the rectum, blood (clear) in the lumen of the rectum.
Endoscopic methods
Today, they - the standard in the diagnosis of colon cancer and other diseases of the colon. These include sigmoidoscopy and colonoscopy. In sigmoidoscopy, the doctor inserts a patient's rectum through the anus sigmoidoscopy, which is a metal tube with the eyepiece and lens with a lamp on the opposite ends. Colonoscope - a longer tube and flexible, unlike rectoromanoscope. Endoscopic methods allow the doctor to "personally" to see the condition of the colon and its pathology, the tumor itself, assess its size, condition, bleeding, the amount in the lumen, which it occupies, and also take a piece of the tumor for biopsy.
Laboratory tests
These include blood and feces. Blood tests may show changes that occur in the body for cancer, for example, leukocytosis, increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate and anemia of chronic blood loss from the tumor. Conducted an analysis of feces, especially for occult blood, because blood is not always possible to identify by digital rectal examination.
Abdominal ultrasound
Ultrasonic examination - one of the easiest and cheapest to date. With proper preparation for it, it helps the patient to estimate the size of the tumor, in which it invades adjacent organs and presence of metastases in distant organs.
Radiographic Methods
These include a barium enema. For this patient is the so-called "barium enema". The barium fills the lumen of the intestine tightly, and then do an X-ray. Usually irrigoscopy shown in cases where colonoscopy or sigmoidoscopy results are dubious or little information, or when there is no possibility of conducting such research.
A biopsy found a tumor
Biopsy - taking a piece of the tumor at colonoscopy. Then take a piece of tissue - biopsy - examined under a microscope histology. At the same time determined by the type of tumor, its degree of differentiation, the degree of sprouting in the intestinal wall.
Computed tomography
This method allows you to "layered" X-ray images of the abdominal cavity, and thus, to assess the state of organs and tissues, as well as the tumor itself.
Typically, the disease of the colon appear "monotone." The main manifestations of are:
Violation of stool (constipation, diarrhea)
Abnormal discharge (usually - the blood).
Pain or discomfort in the abdomen.
All of these signs, of course, non-specific, ie do not speak specifically to any one disease. For example, intestinal bleeding can be a symptom of many diseases of the colon (hemorrhoids, ulcerative colitis, bleeding polyps, cancer, etc.). In addition, it is important to remember that often these diseases may be combined. That is, if the physician in the study on gastrointestinal bleeding revealed you have internal hemorrhoids and "calmed down" on it, you should insist on further full examination of the colon. Discomfort during the examination is not too much and you can be patient, but if the cancer is detected in its early stages and not be left unattended, the effectiveness of treatment is much higher.
In general, any manifestations of intestinal diseases (especially bleeding) in patients older than 50 should always be wary, because you can miss the tumor and to run it.
It is worth noting that the majority of colon tumors (70%) is localized in the distal parts of it (direct and sigmoid colon). So do not neglect the study of such methods as sigmoidoscopy and digital research.
Ultrasound can detect the presence of distant metastases, for example, in the liver. There are four types of ultrasound: percutaneous, endorectal, endoscopic, intraoperative.
