What are the early symptoms of cervical cancer?

Cervical cancer is a common gynecological cancer that female friends need to pay more attention to. The success rate of early cervical cancer treatment is over 90%, so you must know more about your physical condition so that if any disease occurs, you can get it cleared in time. The early symptoms of cervical cancer are not too obvious, and there will be bleeding after defecation, vaginal discharge, etc.

1. There are usually no symptoms in the early stages, and there is no obvious difference from chronic cervicitis. Sometimes the cervix may even be smooth, especially in elderly women whose cervix has atrophied. The main symptoms are:

Vaginal bleeding: Young patients often experience contact bleeding, which occurs during sexual intercourse, gynecological examinations, and after defecation. The amount of bleeding may be more or less, generally depending on the size of the lesion and the extent of invasion of the interstitial blood vessels. The amount of bleeding is small in the early stage, but in the late stage, the lesions are larger and manifest as massive bleeding. Once larger blood vessels are eroded, fatal massive bleeding may occur. Young patients may also experience prolonged menstruation, shortened cycle, increased menstrual flow, etc. Elderly patients often complain of irregular vaginal bleeding after menopause.

Vaginal discharge: Patients often complain of increased vaginal discharge, which is white or bloody, thin like water or rice soup, and has a fishy odor. In the late stage, due to the rupture of cancerous tissue, tissue necrosis, secondary infection, etc., a large amount of purulent or rice-soup-like foul-smelling leucorrhea is discharged.

2. Symptoms of advanced cancer: Secondary symptoms appear depending on the extent of lesion invasion. When the lesions spread to the pelvic connective tissue, pelvic wall, and compress the ureter or rectum, or sciatic nerve, patients often complain of frequent urination, urgency, anal distension, constipation, tenesmus, swelling and pain in the lower limbs, etc. In severe cases, it can lead to ureteral obstruction, hydronephrosis, and finally uremia. In the late stages of the disease, patients may experience weight loss, anemia, fever and general exhaustion.

Cervical cancer screening methods

Cervical smear cytology examination: This method can detect cervical precancerous lesions and early cervical cancer. Because there is a false negative rate of 5%-10%, patients should undergo regular examinations.

Iodine test: Normal cervical and vaginal squamous epithelium are rich in glycogen and can be stained brown by iodine solution, while cervical erosion and abnormal squamous epithelial areas (including atypical hyperplasia, carcinoma in situ and invasive carcinoma) do not have glycogen and will not be stained.

Biopsy of cervix and endocervical canal: If the cervical smear cytology examination is grade III to IV, but the cervical biopsy is negative, multiple tissues should be taken for pathological examination.

Colposcopy: Colposcopy cannot directly confirm whether cancer is present, but it can assist in the biopsy of the cervix. According to statistics, the diagnosis rate of early cervical cancer is as high as about 98% when biopsy is taken with the assistance of a colposcope.