28/07/2020
Abdominal Distension, Pain and Vomiting: Patients on Treatment of Intestinal Cancer
Most probably you are dealing with onset of intestinal obstruction, which means that there is a blockade in the flow of intestinal contents through the intestine because of a block. Lets also understand that these triad of symptoms can happen with many more conditions like renal failure, complications of chemotherapy and so on, but the commonest cause to rule out is a mechanical block.
Here intestine would include stomach, small intestines, colon and re**um.
Visit to your doctor and a few investigations would be required along with hospitalisation. If the obstruction is because of a mechanical block, then this could be due to the tumour growing in size, tumour coming back or a new tumour growing elsewhere. It also could be because of the tumour returning at the previous site. This is called tumour recurrence.
Each patient will get a tailor made treatment according to the circumstances and stage of disease. Some patients would end up getting a non surgical management, where no feeding is done by mouth for a few days till the normal function is restored. More than fifty percent of patients will respond to this line of management.
The remaining will require surgery in some form. In a few we can remove the recurrence; in others we can do a bypass or construct a stoma, which is a temporary opening on the abdominal wall for the intestinal contents to pass.
But please don't delay in visiting a doctor and preferably a surgeon.
