Abdominal Lump

When one touch their abdomen if anyone feels an abnormal feeling or if anyone feels something shifting inside the abdomen this may be secondary to the presence of a lump in the abdomen. Abdominal lump can be painful or painless, it can give rise to pain on touching it – tender. There are various associated other symptoms depending on the origin of these lumps. These can be pain, nausea, vomiting, constipation or loose stools or diarrhoea, rectal or vaginal bleeding in women, passage of blood with urine. However most of them do not cause any other symptoms but you may feel a lump moving inside the abdomen or may feel a lump to your hand.
Depending on the location of the lump in the abdomen a doctor can fairly accurately diagnose the origin of it. For example if it is in the right upper tummy most probably coming from the liver or the gallbladder, if in the lower abdomen in the middle in a female it can be from the uterus or the womb etc.
Most of these diagnoses and management of them may warrant proper examination by a qualified doctor and further investigations with imaging like ultrasound, contrast enhanced CT or MRI. Sometimes these conditions may need blood investigations to diagnose them like liver functions, renal function, assay of various tumour markers.
Most important step one should take in the event of feeling a lump in the tummy is to get a diagnosis of it and to exclude cancer.