Dear Dr. Roach: I am having a “push endoscope,” or forced endoscope, tomorrow. They said they found a lesion in a CT scan and want to look into it further. Is “lesion” a fancy name for cancer? — B.E.

Answer: The word “lesion” is a Latin word for “injury.” In medical parlance, it means pretty much anything that is abnormal. While it is true that doctors will use the term “lesion” to describe something that will later turn out to be cancer, “lesions” definitely are not always cancer.

Push endoscopy, also called push enteroscopy, refers to pushing a small endoscope through the stomach further down into the small intestine, so I suspect that your doctors think that whatever abnormality was seen on the CT scan is in the upper small intestine. Cancer is rare in the small intestine, but unfortunately there are several types that do occur.

Carcinoid, now considered a malignant tumor, is the most common. The enteroscopy will allow your doctor to look at the abnormality and take a biopsy, if appropriate (which I suspect it will be, if a lesion is found).

Some of the possibilities include benign tumors, such as adenomas and lipomas. I also have seen times when a CT scan abnormality has turned out to be nothing at all on endoscopy. Please let me know what is found.

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