Rates of stomach cancer, which is also called gastric cancer, among younger people is on the rise. Typically, stomach cancer is diagnosed in patients in their 60s and 70s, but increasingly it's being diagnosed in younger patients. While rates of stomach cancer in older patients have been declining for decades, early onset stomach cancer is increasing and makes up around 30% of stomach cancer diagnoses.

Dr. Travis Grotz, a Mayo Clinic surgical oncologist, calls this an alarming trend and shares what people should know about the signs and symptoms of stomach cancer.

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"It used to be a cancer of old age, you know, 70s and 80s," says Dr. Grotz. "But now I'm seeing 20-, 30-, 40-year-old people with cancer."

He says many younger patients with stomach cancer are being diagnosed late — when treatment is less effective.

"I think unfortunately, the younger patients, they often think they had a bad meal. They think — even physicians, you know, think — that it's just reflux; they're just stressed out; they're too young to have cancer," says Dr. Grotz.

Symptoms of gastric cancer may be dismissed as minor issues in younger people. Those symptoms can include:

• Weight loss
• Reflux
• Indigestion
• Difficulty swallowing
• Anemia

"Reflux and having heartburn, indigestion, gastritis, that can be normal, absolutely," says Dr. Grotz. "But you certainly want to be aware of that and evaluate and make sure there's not something more sinister going on."

As for what's causing an increase in gastric cancer among younger people, Dr. Grotz says it could be a new, unknown risk factor, possibly related to food preparation or environmental factors.

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