Question
Cervical cancer can affect women in their reproductive age group all the way to women who are already grandmothers. So, there is a wide spectrum. In fact, the youngest person with cervical cancer in Singapore is a teenager, that is the youngest.
The oldest I have seen is maybe a patient in their 90s. As long as have been or are sexually active then there is a risk there.
Yes. As I mentioned, some of the symptoms can be very subtle. You may not be having symptoms. Some people have ulcers, some have gallstones, and they experience bloating. Occasionally people have food poisoning. It’s really figuring out what is what. Unfortunately, at times like this, it’s very difficult to decide. We, as a professional, would say “okay, what are the chances of this being a stomach cancer, what’s the chance of it being something completely different? ” So it’s really taking the context into consideration.
It goes back to staging. When we say staging, when we do the operation -- has the cancer spread further? Although we see it, it depends whether it has gone microscopic -- little cells that moved away beyond where we excise. One of the things that we really know is that after we take the stomach away, we send it to a laboratory to have it looked at. They chop it into little pieces and look at it in detail, see if there are any cancer cells elsewhere. That will give an indication of how likely it is to come back. Another thing is what type of cancer it is.
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