Intrabdominal Cancer Flashcards
What are the main variants of gastric cancer?
Intestinal type with gland formation and diffuse type with intercellular adhesion molecules and no gland formation.
What is the most common subtype of gastric cancer?
Gastric adenocarcinoma with lower socioeconomic groups, Japan, CHhile, Costa Rica and Easten Europe and those with multi focal mucosal atrophy
Which regions have higher occurrences of gastric adenocarcinoma?
Japan, Chile, Costa Rica, Eastern Europe, and lower socioeconomic groups.
What are the major risk factors for gastric cancer?
- H. pylori infection
- Genetic condition HNPCC and FAP
*Pernicious anaemia
*Blood group A - Epstein Barr virus infections
- Obesity
- Contaminated water
- GERD
- Alcohol intake
- Consumption of smoked food containing nitrosamines
- Chronic gastritis
- Occupations involving rubber manufacturing, tin mining, and coal exposure.
What protective factors are associated with gastric cancer?
High fruit and vegetable intake.
What is the majority site of gastric cancer occurrence?
The antrum of the stomach.
What are common clinical presentations of gastric cancer?
- Abdominal pain
- Early satiety
- Weight loss
- Fatigue
- Nausea and vomiting
- Dyspepsia
- Dysphagia.
Which lymph nodes are commonly affected by gastric cancer?
- Virchow’s node (left supraclavicular)
- Sister Mary Joseph node (periumbilical)
- Irish node (left axillary).
What are the common sites of metastasis in gastric cancer?
Metastasis includes Blum shelf with metastasis to rectourine pouch
Kruskenberg tumour with metastasis to ovaries which occurs bilaterally
What are the paraneoplastic manifestations of gastric cancer?
Acanthosis nigricans, Trousseau syndrome and, dermatological diffuse seborrheic keratosis and microangiopathic haemolytic anaemia.Metastasis to the lungs can cause pleural effusion and dyspnoea and crackles on auscultation.
What are the investigations for gastric cancer?
Upper endoscopy with biopsy which may show signet cells, a large vacuole of mucin which displaces the nucleus to one side. Higher numbers of signet ring cells are associated with a worse prognosis
CT scan of chest abdomen and pelvis to assess for metastatic disease
Endoscopic ultrasound is ideal for early stage cancers
What is the TNM staging system for gastric cancer?
- T1a: Tumor within the inner layers (mucosa)
- T1b: Tumor through mucosa into submucosa
- T2: Tumor into muscle layer
- T3: Tumor into outer lining
- T4a: Tumor through outer lining
- T4b: Tumor into nearby organs.
What is the first-line treatment for early-stage gastric cancer?
Surgical resection. And endoscopic mucosa resection
How should tumours greater than T2 be managed?
T2 without any evidence of nodal involvement should undergo perioperative chemotherapy followed by surgery.
What is a common complication of gastric cancer treatment?
Dumping syndrome, where rapid gastric emptying causes fluctuations in blood sugar.
What are the key characteristics of gastric lymphomas?
Typically diffuse large B cell lymphoma, requires combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
What are the features of gastric lymphomas?
It has similar presentation to gastric cancer, but more prominent fever and night sweats.
How is gastric lymphoma treated?
Treatment of H.pylroi may cause complete remission of MALT lymphoma but for non-MALT, monoclonal antibodies against CD20 is ideal such as rituximab.
What is the most common type of pancreatic cancer?
Adenocarcinoma of the pancreatic duct cells. Majority arise from the pancreatic head, with one third arising from the body and tail of the pancreas. Genetic mutations associated with this is KRAS2 and CDKN2 in majority.
What are common risk factors for pancreatic cancer?
- Smoking
- Age over 55
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Chronic pancreatitis
- Cirrhosis
- Helicobacter pylori infection
- Chemical exposure in certain industries.
What is a common clinical presentation of pancreatic cancer?
- Painless jaundice from obstruction of common bile duct
- Weight loss
- Abdominal pain.
- There may be weakness, pruritis from bile salts in the skin, dark urine.
*There may be new onset diabetes and Courvoisier sign, with painless jaundice and right upper quadrant mass as chronically inflamed gall-bladder is less likely to dilate, whic indicates pancreatic or biliary cancer.
*There may be signs of malabsorption like steatorrhoea and reccurent thrombophlebitis. Icauses obstructive.
What is the significance of the ‘double duct sign’ in pancreatic cancer?
Dilatation of both the common bile duct and pancreatic duct.
What are the diagnostic features of pancreatic cancers?
LFTs indicating cholestasis with raised ALP/GGT and multi detector computed tomography (MDCT) to image the pancreas with phased imaging based on the time after CT injection.
What does ERCP involve?
Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP)is a test in which an endoscope injects a contrast dye into the biliary duct and pancreatic duct. The level of biliary or pancreatic obstruction can be delineated