Stomach cancer is difficult to cure unless found at an early stage, as early stomach cancer doesn’t cause many symptoms and tends to be diagnosed when it has advanced.
Treatment for stomach cancer may include:
- Surgery – which may involve the removal of part or all of the stomach.
- Radiation therapy – uses high-energy particles to target and destroy cancer cells.
- Chemotherapy – involves the use of anti-cancer drugs which are taken orally (by mouth) or injected into the body.
- Immunotherapy – uses your immune system to slow the growth of cancer cells and destroy existing cancer cells.
Surgery remains the only curative treatment for stomach cancer, where areas of the stomach and lymphatic tissue are removed. Chemotherapy can also be used to reduce the size of tumours prior to surgery, to decrease the risk of recurrence and for palliative patients to remove obstruction.1