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lung Cancer Causes, symptoms, diagnosis, Stage
lung Cancer Causes, symptoms, diagnosis, Stage
Lung cancer - malignant neoplasm that develops from the epithelial tissue of the lung. Lung cancer in many countries leading in causes of death from cancer among men. Mortality from this disease is 85% of all patients, regardless of the success of modern medicine. In some countries, lung cancer mortality and morbidity among women are also beginning to emerge in the first place. What is the reason for this phenomenon? Revealed that lung cancer among women is increasing, where a growing number of smokers.
Thus, the main cause of lung cancer - smoking. About 80% of patients with this pathology - smokers. The remaining 20% of cases of cancer associated with exposure to factors such as radon areas, contact with asbestos dust, heavy metals, chloromethyl ether. Increased risk of lung cancer is also characteristic of individuals with chronic inflammatory lung diseases and those with pulmonary fibrosis. Still, the main contribution to the risk of cancer makes it smoke. The explanation of this fact is quite simple. Tobacco smoke contains both physical and chemical factors of carcinogenesis in large quantities.
The main symptoms of the disease include coughing, shortness of breath, chest pain, hemoptysis, weight loss. Identification of most of these symptoms should alert and get immediate medical attention. It should be noted that these symptoms are nonspecific, ie, characteristic of many respiratory diseases. For this reason, unfortunately, many patients have been slow to sound the alarm.
You also need to pay attention to such indirect signs as lethargy, listlessness, loss of proper activity. We need to pay attention to the little wanton increase in body temperature. A small temperature can mask the lung by sluggish bronchitis or pneumonia. In addition to these features as they say on the laboratory and clinical paraneoplastic syndrome. His manifestations of lung cancer are hypercalcemia (squamous form of cancer), hypernatremia (with small cell carcinoma), hypertrophic osteoarthropathy (ovsyanokletochnom with lung cancer), etc. Treatment of the underlying disease leads to the disappearance of paraneoplaticheskogo syndrome.
However, 15% of the initial stages of lung cancer occur completely asymptomatic, and therefore its presence can be suspected only by examinations. Typically, such a survey is an annual snapshot of photofluorographic. If a picture is revealed tumor shadow in the picture, the diagnosis of "lung cancer" is not removed until it is proven otherwise.
Small cell carcinoma occurs in about 25% of cases, squamous cell cancer - about 30% of cases, adenocarcinoma - in about 30% of the bronchoalveolar cancer - about 2% of cases, large cell carcinoma - about 15% of cases.
Non-small cell lung cancer variants are usually metastasize through the lymphatic pathways, first in the next (bronchopulmonary), lymph nodes, and then to distant lymph nodes mediastinum. Distant metastases can be detected in the other lung, bone, bone marrow, brain, adrenal glands and liver. Unfortunately, more than half of patients seek medical attention even in the presence of distant metastases, which sharply reduces the chances of successful treatment.
When the diagnosis of lung cancer using a standard international TNM-classification, depending on which set the stage of the disease:
I stage. A tumor the size of a small 3 cm or more, without the involvement of the pleura and regional lymph nodes, without distant metastases.
Stage II. The tumor has the same parameters as in the first stage, but with metastases in the bronchial lymph nodes.
Stage IIIa. A tumor of any size with the involvement of the visceral pleura, chest wall or mediastinal pleura, and (or) metastases in mediastinal lymph nodes and bronchial opposite side.
Stage IIIb. A tumor of any size, germinating in the mediastinal organs (vessels, esophagus, spine, heart) with possible lymph node metastasis in bronchopulmonary the other hand, mediastinal lymph nodes, or supraclavicular lymph nodes.
Stage IV. The presence of distant metastases, as well as limited or widespread small cell lung cancer.
Of great importance is the availability of diagnosis of metastases in lung cancer. Lung cancer with metastases tend to be only a palliative treatment, and conversely, the absence of metastases provides good chances for success of radical surgery.
Tactics of treatment also depends on the histologic type of detectable cancer. Thus, in small cell lung cancer prognosis is usually poor, as well as the main method used to treat chemotherapy, while in other types of lung cancer are used surgical techniques, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and combinations thereof.
