The most concealed tumors are hypoglycemia, hot flashes, recurrent abdominal pain, recurrent gastric ulcer, diarrhea, cough, palpitation, asthma, fever, dermatitis and night sweats. These seemingly common symptoms may hide a "I don't know what" cancer warning behind them. Compared with the ten most common cancers such as lung cancer, liver cancer and breast cancer, "neuroendocrine tumor" doesn't know what it is, let alone how to check or find a cure.
"Neuroendocrine tumors are tumors that grow from neuroendocrine cells and can grow in any part of the body. Everyone should have heard of "small cell lung cancer", which actually refers to "neuroendocrine tumor growing in the lung". Chen, an attending physician in the Department of Oncology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, said.
When neuroendocrine cells in various parts of the body become cancerous, neuroendocrine cancer tumors will grow. For example, Chen said that "islet cells" in the pancreas are responsible for secreting insulin. If it becomes cancerous, it will become a "neuroendocrine tumor in the pancreas", and excessive insulin secretion will cause severe hypoglycemia symptoms. This is the kind of cancer that Jobs had.
Small files of neuroendocrine tumors
Etiology: unknown, it can happen to anyone.
Prevalence: In Taiwan Province Province, the prevalence rate is about 1 .5/100000, and there are about100000 new cases every year.
Epidemic age: not necessarily, but it usually happens after adulthood and middle age, and it hardly happens under 10.
Dominant group: people with family history, such as MEN 1 gene.
The most common sites: 60% are gastrointestinal tract, 30% are lung, and 10% are thyroid, adrenal gland, kidney, prostate and uterus.
Treatment: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormone inhibitors, targeting.
The five-year survival rate is 90% in the first stage, 80% in the second stage and 50-60% in the third stage.
Looking back at the family history, I found that this cancer has lasted for four generations. Huang Canlong, chairman of the Society of Neuroendocrine Tumors, said that in fact, it is best to look at "family history" in the diagnosis of neuroendocrine tumors. He once had a case in which Mr. Wang in his thirties was diagnosed as a "pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor". Only two months later, his sister was also diagnosed with neuroendocrine tumor.
Photo caption/Huang Canlong, Chairman of Neuroendocrine Oncology Society, and Chen, Attending Physician of Oncology Department of Taipei Veterans General Hospital. At this time, the family began to notice that something was wrong and took everyone to check. It turned out that both his father and brother had it, and finally traced it back to his deceased grandfather, probably because of liver metastasis of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor.
"This is the gene mutation of MEN 1! It is the most common mutation type of neuroendocrine tumors. Huang Canlong said that at that time, Mr. Wang's two children were still young, but they were also worried about the onset and could only continue to follow up. Unexpectedly, when the eldest son 15 years old, he began to get sick. The location of a family-grown tumor ranges from pancreas, parathyroid gland and pituitary gland to mediastinum, which is the most prone to deterioration.
Chen said that because there are too few people with symptoms, even if there are symptoms, most of them are common symptoms such as abdominal pain and diarrhea, so most of the people who will be found are found during health checkups. "These symptoms will last for more than four weeks and have been repeated. No matter how ineffective the treatment is, doctors will suspect that it may be cancer, but it is difficult to find it before. 」
Therefore, Chen proposed to have a health examination once a year, including gastrointestinal endoscopy, abdominal ultrasound and low-dose lung CT. , you can find out these terrible factors as soon as possible.
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