Metastatic symptoms of rectal cancer to spine?

summary

Metastasis of rectal cancer to the spine is the most common site of cancer metastasis in the whole body. Lung cancer, breast cancer, renal cancer, prostate cancer and thyroid cancer are the most common cancer metastases to the spine. The most common symptom of patients with spinal metastases is back pain, often weeks or months earlier than other neurological symptoms. Metastatic symptoms of rectal cancer to spine? Let's talk about it.

Metastatic symptoms of rectal cancer to spine?

1. Pain: pain is the most common chief complaint in patients with symptomatic spinal metastases, which can occur in 83-95% of patients and occurs several weeks or months earlier than other neurological symptoms. The earliest symptom is chest back pain or low back pain in the lesion plane, which is generally mild and intermittent. It often does not attract attention. Symptomatic treatment is given and gradually becomes persistent severe pain. The first symptom of 10% of cancer patients was pain associated with spinal metastasis. There are three typical types of pain in patients with spinal metastases, including local pain, mechanical pain and nerve root pain. The pain experienced by the patient may be one of the types, or it may be a combination of multiple types. Distinguishing the types of pain in individual patients is a key part of the diagnostic evaluation process. Local pain is caused by periosteal stretch and inflammation caused by tumor growth. It is described as deep "biting" or "soreness" pain. It often occurs at night and relieves after activity. Anti inflammatory drugs or corticosteroids can quickly relieve it.

2. Neurological dysfunction: another common symptom of patients with spinal metastases is motor dysfunction. 60-85% of patients with metastatic spinal epidural compression (MESCC) have one or more groups of muscle weakness. This kind of myasthenia may be related to myelopathy and radiculopathy. It may be caused by the tumor directly compressing the nerve structure, or pathological fracture leading to the fracture piece protruding into the spinal canal or nerve root canal. Patients with MESCC may have different degrees of autonomic dysfunction, such as intestinal, bladder or sexual dysfunction, which are often not found unless they are directly consulted by doctors.

3. When the diagnosis of spinal cord compression is clear, the neurological function is closely related to the prognosis. Most patients have pain symptoms before neurological dysfunction, but because back pain is very common in the general population, diagnosis delay often occurs in patients with spinal metastases who initially complained of new onset back pain or neck pain. Therefore, clinicians should be alert to patients with back pain and tumor tendency. In addition, compared with cervical vertebrae and lumbar vertebrae, pain caused by non tumor is not common in thoracic vertebrae. Therefore, tumor should be considered when pain occurs in this region.

matters needing attention

Although advances in chemotherapy regimens have improved the treatment of cancer in the past few decades, these therapies usually have limited effect in the treatment of spinal metastases, because spinal metastases are an advanced complication of cancer. However, the application of postoperative neoadjuvant therapy has improved the therapeutic effect of some metastatic tumors, including germinoma, high-risk neuroblastoma, Ewing's sarcoma and osteosarcoma.