The leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide is lung cancer.
Lung cancer is also one of the few cancers that have a definite known cause (you’re correct, it’s smoking). Another one like this is cervical cancer, caused by the HPV virus. While we don’t have reliable data in Nigeria, in America, 200,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year.
A normal lung and a a cancerous lung
Risk Factors for Lung Cancer
- Smoking: A cigarette contains up to 4000 chemicals, 70 of which are known to cause cancer. Smoking is also addictive because of nicotine found in tobacco. So, it is best not to start at all. And if you’ve already started, ensure to quit. Read here to see how.
- Secondhand smoke: When you are passively exposed to smoke produced while others are smoking, it is called secondhand smoke. Mind the company you keep.
- Air pollution: In this industrial age, thousands of chemicals are released into the atmosphere, some of which can cause cancer, e.g., particulate matter.
- Other chronic lung diseases: For example, lung cancer can arise from the old scar of tuberculosis lesions in the lungs.
- Occupational hazards: Exposure to dangerous chemicals in factories and construction work like radon gas and asbestos
Note that up to 20% of people with lung cancer have never smoked. Also, sometimes we may not be able to identify any risk factor in patients with lung cancer.
Symptoms
- Persistent cough
- Bloody cough
- Chest pain
- Weight loss
- Recurrent chest infections
- Arm weakness
- Drooping eyelid
Diagnosis
If you experience any of those symptoms I mentioned earlier, especially when they last for more than 2 weeks, go see a doctor.
The doctor may then perform any/all of these tests:
- Imaging: The doctor may request a chest Xray or chest CT to see if there’s a cancer growing in the lungs
- Bronchoscopy: The doctor may pass a camera in a tube (the bronchoscope) down your windpipe into your lungs and bronchi to see directly if there’s any abnormal growth there
- Biopsy: This is usually done with the bronchoscopy. If the bronchoscope views an abnormal growth, the doctor can take a sample of it and send to the lab for analysis to Know whether it is cancer or not
- Thoracocentesis: if the doctor thinks that there’s fluid in your chest surrounding your lungs, he may take a sample of that fluid and send it to the lab to check for cancer cells in the fluid.
Treatment
- Surgery: if the tumor is not too advanced, we can remove the part of the lung with the cancer. Or we could remove that whole lung (you can breathe just fine with one).
- Chemotherapy: Unfortunately, most times, people come to the doctor late and surgery is impossible then. So we give powerful drugs to kill those cancer cells. That is chemotherapy
- Immunotherapy: Immunotherapy targets and kills only cancer cells. Not like chemotherapy which kills both normal and cancer cells. Chemotherapy’s non-targeted killing of both normal and abnormal cells by the way is why people’s hair falls off and they have terrible vomiting and anaemia. The chemotherapy drugs have killed the normal hair follicles, cells lining the intestine and blood cells in the bone marrow. Immunotherapy will not do that. It will kill only abnormal cells.
- Radiotherapy: This uses high-energy X-rays to kill the cancer cells. Normal cells are often killed alongside as well.
Conclusion
Stop smoking and pay attention to your respiratory health.
Meanwhile, do you have catarrh now? Read here to see what to do!
