Ed Everest's Guide to the World's Best Cancer Websites
The home page address is www.bestcancersites.comTHE BEST STOMACH (GASTRIC) CANCER WEBSITES
The address of this page is www.bestcancersites.com/stomachThis is a summary of the best websites I could find around the world for stomach cancer, both for general information (symptoms, treatment options, research, etc) and for forums (message or discussion boards) and other kinds of support. And for those living in Australia there is information about Australian websites here.
I have been unable to find any comprehensive websites run by support groups or volunteers on the net devoted solely to stomach cancers, but nevertheless there are some good sources of information and support.
If you are looking for information on stomach cancers and their treatment, the best place to go is the website of the National Cancer Institute (USA) at www.cancer.gov . The section devoted to Stomach (Gastric) Cancers gives an easy to read and easy to understand description of what these cancers are, how they are diagnosed, treatment options, descriptions of treatments, and more.
The direct links to this section is Stomach (Gastric) Cancer, or go to their home page, find the heading “Types of Cancer” and click on the link “A to Z List of Cancers” and look for Stomach (Gastric) Cancer.
The American Cancer Society, a voluntary organisation, runs one of the most comprehensive websites on cancer and cancer-related matters on the net. Their address is www.cancer.org. To find their information on stomach cancer, go to their home page, click on the link "Choose a cancer topic" and find and click on Stomach Cancer in the alphabetical list that displays and then click on Go.
They have many other resources too for those involved with cancer so it's well worth browsing their site for additional information and support that may be relevant to your situation. The direct link to their forums index page is forums index.
There's an important qualification they give for those involved with less common forms of cancers in the stomach. They say "Most cancers of the stomach are of a type called adenocarcinomas. This cancer develops from cells that form the lining of the innermost layer, the mucosa. The following are other, much less common, tumors that are found in the stomach: Lymphomas are cancers of the immune system tissue that are sometimes found in the wall of the stomach. Gastric stromal tumors develop from the muscle or connective tissue of the stomach wall. Carcinoid tumors are tumors of hormone-producing cells of the stomach. Most of these do not spread to other organs. The treatment and outlook for these more rare cancers are different from that of adenocarcinoma and are not covered here. To learn more about them, please see the American Cancer Society articles called "Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma" and "Gastrointestinal (Digestive System) Carcinoid Tumors."
New entry 22nd October 2007 - there is an active stomach cancer forum (message board) on the CancerCompass website at www.cancercompass.com - just go to their home page and it's easy to find the forum from there.
Mailing lists provide another way of getting in touch with others involved with stomach cancer and for sharing information and support. There is a stomach cancer list - STOMACH-ONC The Stomach Cancer Online Support Group - 291 subscribers on 16th July 2006- hosted by the Association of Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) - to find the list go to the ACOR website at www.acor.org and click on 'Mailing Lists Center' near the top of the page. It may also be worth searching through their index of mailing lists to look for any other lists that may be relevant to your situation.
A physician-friendly set of clinical guidelines for the treatment of stomach cancer (look for gastric cancer) prepared by The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (USA) can be found by going to this webpage www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/default.asp , and a patient-friendly version may in the future be prepared in collaboration with the American Cancer Society and a link to it posted here:
www.nccn.org/patients/patient_gls.aspIf you want to delve deeper into any aspect of cancer, a good source of information is Medlineplus at www.medlineplus.gov. It's a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health and it’s a big well-organised and easily searchable site. The link to the section on cancers is www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cancers.html and the link to their section on stomach cancer is www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/stomachcancer.html.
Other websites you may find valuable
Cancercare is a large USA-based organisation "that provides free, professional support services for anyone affected by cancer." On their website at www.cancercare.org you can find some information resources, advice on such matters as financial assistance, and counseling services (online, telephone and face-to-face). There are also some online support groups or forums.The website RxList at www.rxlist.com - self-described as “The Internet Drug Index providing fast, reliable information to both the consumer and the medical professional” - has information about hundreds of medicinal drugs and also active forums or discussion boards on the more popular drugs as well as forums for discussing less popular drugs and alternative therapies. The link to their forums index page is www.rxlist.com/rxboard.htm.
If you have concerns about fertility in relation to cancer and its treatment, go to this page www.bestcancersites.com/fertility for links to websites with information and support on fertility issues (and you can use your back button to return to this page).
There are links to lymphedema websites on this page www.bestcancersites.com/lymphedema (and you can use your back button to return here).
NORD - the National Organisation for Rare Disorders - on their website at www.rarediseases.org has a database of rare disorders including many rare cancers. The database gives a list of alternative names for each disorder, some basic information about the disorder, and a list of organisations related to that disorder.
A good website for finding clinical trials relating to any type of cancer is the USA Government’s National Cancer Institute site at www.cancer.gov - go to their home page and click on the link Clinical Trials, or click on this direct link www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials.
There’s another USA Government website called ClinicalTrials.gov at www.clinicaltrials.gov where you can search for trials. “ClinicalTrials.gov offers up-to-date information for locating federally and privately supported clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions” and “ClinicalTrials.gov currently contains approximately 12,600 clinical studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, other federal agencies, and private industry. Studies listed in the database are conducted in all 50 States and in over 100 countries. ClinicalTrials.gov receives over 4 million page views per month and hosts approximately 17,000 visitors daily.”
I suggest starting your search for clinical trials with the National Cancer Institute site at www.cancer.gov and then trying the ClinicalTrials.gov site. I don't know if ClinicalTrials.gov includes the same database as the NCI site but it doesn’t use the same search form so it might turn up something different anyway. Both sites include trials around the world as well as those in the USA.
You could also try the “American Cancer Society /EmergingMed Clinical Trials Matching Service ... This free Clinical Trial Matching and Referral Service is made available to American Cancer Society visitors through a collaboration with EmergingMed. ... Fill out one questionnaire and within seconds you'll know if your profile matches any clinical trials in our system. The EmergingMed database contains more than 3,000 clinical trials for treatment, prevention and early detection of cancer.” Look for the link to clinical trials on the home page of the American Cancer Society or try this direct link http://clinicaltrials.cancer.org .
There are links to nutrition and excercise guidelines on this webpage nutrition and excercise guidelines.
For anyone considering trying an alternative treatment for cancer (one that is not mainstream medicine and scientifically demonstrated to be safe and beneficial) the website Quackwatch has a very good section on their site called “A Special Message for Cancer Patients Seeking "Alternative" Treatments”. It will help you decide whether an alternative treatment you are considering is safe and might be beneficial in some way, or whether it might be unsafe and/or fraudulent. The direct link is www.quackwatch.org/00AboutQuackwatch/altseek.html or you can find the link on their home page at www.quackwatch.org.
The American Cancer Society website has a valuable section called "Complementary and Alternative Therapies". It's buried deep in their website and difficult to find - there's no link to it from their home page. Try this direct link www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/ETO_5.asp?sitearea=ETO or else put the word alternative into the search window on the home page and look for a link to the section in the search results. If you're thinking of trying a specific alternative or complimentary treatment you've come across on the internet or elsewhere you may find information about it in this section.
Another website that discusses the subject of alternative treatments in some detail is the website of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at www.nccam.nih.gov.
The American Cancer Society has a very good information page giving advice on how to use the internet for finding information on cancer, and how to determine if that information is reliable. The direct link to it is Cancer Information on the Internet.
More suggestions please
If you know of any other good stomach cancer websites large or small, or active forums (message or discussion boards) or mailing lists on stomach cancer you would like to see added to this page, or you find any errors or broken links, please send me an email at
everest@bestcancersites.com.Ed Everest, Adelaide, Australia
Page updated 11th September 2006
Australian Stomach Cancer Websites
There do not appear to be any websites based in Australia devoted to stomach cancer at present.
There are annotated links to Australian general cancer websites on this webpage Australian general cancer websites (it opens in a new window). Please do check it out - you'll find websites listed there with a wide variety of information relevant to Australia (including lists of support groups and treatment centres) that you won't find on the websites described above.
More suggestions pleaseIf you know of any other good stomach cancer websites large or small, or active forums (message or discussion boards) or mailing lists on stomach cancer you would like to see added to this page, or you find any errors or broken links, please send me an email at
everest@bestcancersites.com.Ed Everest, Adelaide, Australia
Page updated 11th September 2006
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