Specialist for stomach cancer - Dr. Klaus Emmanuel

Your specialist for stomach cancer

“We never give up on anyone, ever.” This has probably also become the guiding principle of our interdisciplinary team, which has set itself the goal of ensuring the life and quality of life of our patients suffering from stomach cancer in the best possible way. Personally, I am one of the most internationally recognized specialists in stomach diseases.

Our individual treatment concept for stomach cancer

The stomach is a tubular to pouch-shaped hollow organ located in the upper abdomen, just below the diaphragm. The esophagus opens into it, from which it absorbs food, digests it to a certain extent and passes it on to the duodenum .

Due to the complex anatomy, the treatment of stomach diseases is reserved for stomach specialists and specialist centers , as it requires an interdisciplinary team of experts and state-of-the-art treatment methods. The treatment concept should be individually tailored to the patient’s life situation, tumor biology and personal wishes.

Types of stomach cancer

Stomach cancer (gastric carcinoma) is one of the malignant diseases of the upper digestive tract. Stomach specialists differentiate between two types of malignant cancer:

Adenocarcinoma usually originates from the glandular cells that produce gastric juice.

The rarer, so-called gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are variants of stomach cancer in which cells of muscle or connective tissue (sarcomas) or lymphatic cells (lymphomas) can be affected.

Symptoms of stomach cancer

The symptoms of stomach cancer are non-specific. They can manifest themselves in the form of difficulty swallowing and stomach pain, pain in the upper abdomen, loss of appetite, aversion to meat dishes and night sweats. An early symptom may be so-called tarry stools (melena) – a black discoloration of the stool caused by digested blood components – which requires further clarification by stomach specialists.

Although frequent heartburn is not considered an early symptom of stomach cancer, it can lead to stomach cancer at the junction of the esophagus and stomach if it persists for a long time. Stomach specialists should also be contacted in order to find the cause of the heartburn.

Risk factors

Gastric carcinoma is favored by various risk factors:

These primarily include alcohol and nicotine, as well as the consumption of salted (cured) and smoked foods.

However, previous inflammation of the stomach lining (gastritis), stomach ulcers (ulcus ventriculi), giant fold stomach (Ménétriere’s disease) or previous stomach surgery can also promote the development of a stomach tumor.

Especially from the age of 50, patients should not ignore the occurrence of stomach complaints and should contact stomach specialists for further clarification and, if necessary, treatment.

Diagnostics

The most important diagnostic method is gastroscopy with endosonography, a special ultrasound of the stomach wall that can be performed from the inside during gastroscopy.

During this examination, a sample can be taken with the help of a microneedle if necessary, which is then examined for benignity or malignancy.

To complete the examination, stomach specialists arrange for a computer tomography of the abdominal and thoracic cavity and possibly also a PET computer tomography.

Treatment of stomach cancer

If stomach cancer is diagnosed, the extent of the cancer is decisive for treatment.

If there are no metastases in other organs, surgery – known as a (sub)total gastric resection – is the method of choice. This usually involves minimally invasive or robot-assisted procedures. We pay particular attention to the reconstruction of the stomach in order to ensure a particularly good quality of life after the operation.

From a certain tumor size, chemotherapy or radiochemotherapy is performed both prior to and after surgery as part of international standards.

Patients who have been diagnosed with early gastric carcinoma can undergo a gentle endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR). In this procedure, small, superficial tumors are removed endoscopically and the stomach is preserved.

Life after the operation

As a rule, no special rehabilitation is required after hospitalization.

We recommend that you attend a nutritional consultation at our hospital. In principle, it is possible to consume all types of food and drinks again in slightly smaller portions.

After the operation, you will receive an individual aftercare pass from us, in which a regular review of the healing success (tumor aftercare) is carried out.

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