Introduction
Gastrointestinal stromal tumours are tumours that develop in your GI tract. Most of them start in your stomach, or small intestine and these usually expand slowly and may never require therapy. Others develop and spread quickly, says the best cancer doctor in Kolkata.
Risk factors
GIST risk factors include:
Retinoblastoma
Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1, von Recklinghausen disease)
Tuberous sclerosis (Bourneville disease)
Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP, Gardner syndrome)
Li-Fraumeni syndrome
Werner syndrome (adult progeria)
Nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome (Gorlin syndrome)
Carney-Stratakis syndrome
Familial history of GIST
If you feel you are at risk of GIST, consult with your doctor.
Symptoms
According to an oncologist specialist in Kolkata, the symptoms depend entirely on the extent of your tumour and its location. The symptoms of GIST include:
Feeling full after a few bites or not wanting to eat at all
Bellyache or a lump you can feel
Blood in stool
Nausea
Difficulty swallowing
Unexplainable weight loss
Some small GISTs never cause symptoms and they can be found by your doctor when you have a test for something else.
Treatment
The examinations while diagnosis also gives your doctor an understanding of what treatment will be the best for you. Surgery is the primary cure for most GISTs and it can often cure small tumours. But if your tumour is very large or close to other organs, you can be prescribed medicines to shrink the tumour before surgery or your surgeon may remove a part of another organ to reach cancer.
It's essential to find a surgeon who knows about GISTs as it takes special skills to remove them, so cancer doesn't spread. Numerous types of cancer are treated with radiation, chemotherapy or both, but these therapies don't work well for GISTs.
Some medications can treat GISTs if surgery is not the best option for you. Which drug is the best for you will rely on the characteristics of your tumour. The targeted drugs Gleevec, Stivarga and Sutent are approved for GIST and have been known to help shrink tumours. If the tumour is inoperable or has metastasized, you may be prescribed a kinase inhibitor that works by stopping proteins that cause cancer. Options include Ayvakit and Qinlock, says the best cancer doctor in Kolkata.
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