Following Toby Keith's passing, doctors caution that symptoms of stomach cancer can go unnoticed.

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Country music icon Toby Keith passed away on Monday night at the age of 62, following a battle with stomach cancer that lasted over two years.

Keith revealed his diagnosis back in June 2022 sharing that he had been diagnosed in the fall of 2021 and had undergone chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Last June, he informed The Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma City that his tumor had shrunk by a third and that he was undergoing ongoing chemotherapy along with immunotherapy, a treatment aimed at bolstering the immune system's ability to fight cancer cells.

His passing has reignited calls from medical professionals to remain vigilant about the symptoms associated with stomach cancer, such as heartburn, acid reflux, anemia, nausea, ulcers, post-meal pain, sudden weight loss, or feeling full quickly after eating.

Dr. Fabian Johnston, the division chief of gastrointestinal oncology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, emphasized that symptoms like acid reflux might be mistakenly disregarded as harmless, potentially leading to delayed diagnoses. By the time symptoms manifest, the disease may have progressed significantly.

Stomach cancer typically affects individuals around the age of 68, with men facing a slightly higher risk. Although it accounts for around 1.5% of new cancer cases in the U.S. annually, nearly 27,000 new cases are expected to be diagnosed this year, according to estimates by the American Cancer Society.

While overall rates of stomach cancer diagnoses have seen a slight decline over the past decade, there has been an uptick in cases among adults under 50, the reasons for which remain unclear.

Dr. Ben Schlechter, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, pointed out that traditional risk factors for stomach cancer, such as alcohol and tobacco use, now contribute to a minority of cases in the U.S., possibly due to decreased smoking rates. However, there appears to be a modern factor or combination of factors contributing to the increased incidence of stomach cancer among younger individuals.