April 25, 2024

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Do you need to have surgery immediately when lung cancer is diagnosed?

Do you need to have surgery immediately when lung cancer is diagnosed?

 

Do you need to have surgery immediately when lung cancer is diagnosed?  Doctor: It depends on these conditions to decide. 


Elderly and frail patients: elderly patients older than 85 years old, and patients with poor cardiopulmonary function or unable to take care of themselves are not recommended for surgical resection

According to statistics, there will be 9.96 million cancer deaths worldwide in 2020, including 1.8 million deaths from lung cancer. Although the new cases of breast cancer surpassed lung cancer in 2020, lung cancer still ranks first among deaths. And so far, the cause of lung cancer is not completely clear.


Most experts believe that lung cancer is mainly related to smoking, passive smoking, occupational exposure, and air pollution.

Therefore, it is recommended to prevent the occurrence of lung cancer by promoting smoking cessation, staying away from dust, smog, etc. It also calls for early screening, early diagnosis and early treatment for high-risk groups of lung cancer in order to achieve the purpose of prolonging life.

 

The following 4 symptoms may be signs of lung cancer:

1. Prolonged cough is not healed-dry cough

If you have a long-term persistent cough or dry cough in the near future, and the cough cannot be controlled well by taking medicine, you should be more vigilant about lung cancer.

About half of lung cancer patients will experience irritating dry cough, choking, etc. at different stages in the course of the disease.

If the cancer occurs in the large bronchus or the cancer stimulates the sensitive bronchial mucosa, an irritating cough will occur.

2. Coughing up blood

When symptoms of prolonged cough and hemoptysis occur, be aware that the lungs may have become cancerous.

The main reason for hemoptysis is that there is a rich blood supply on the surface of the tumor, and the blood vessels are very fragile and especially easily damaged.

Once coughing, it may stimulate the tumor, causing the blood vessels on the surface of the tumor to rupture and hemorrhage.

Especially when a large blood vessel ruptures, there will be uncontrollable, severe, hemoptysis.

3. Chest pain

Coughing itself can cause chest pain. If the tumor invades the chest wall or pleura, the patient will experience sharp and intermittent pain, or even constant pain.

4. Hoarse voice

When the patient’s condition progresses, hoarseness will also appear at different stages, and this hoarseness is not the same as the hoarseness caused by common diseases, that is, the sudden appearance of hoarseness is accompanied by coughing and chest pain.

 

The condition progressed rapidly, and medication could not be relieved, mainly because the tumor continued to enlarge and metastasize, so it was compressed to the recurrent laryngeal nerve, and finally caused the vocal cords to paralyze, so the voice would appear hoarse.

Therefore, we have always recommended that high-risk groups must have regular physical examinations, but many patients are afraid of physical examinations, afraid that they will find any serious illnesses.

In fact, lung cancer does not mean death. In fact, the cure rate is very high in the early detection.

When the mass is less than 2cm in the early stage of lung cancer, if the solid component is found to be less than 50%, sublobectomy can be performed by surgery, and the 5-year survival rate after surgery is as high as 97%.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology has made recommendations on how large lung nodules need to be removed: generally, lung nodules above 6mm need to be removed. Although small nodules smaller than 6mm can be removed without surgery, they need to be reviewed regularly to observe the changes in the nodules. If there are changes, they should be dealt with in time.

Lung cancer can be divided into stages Ⅰ to Ⅳ. For non-invasive tumors less than 2cm, if the solid component is less than 50%, the patient can be surgically removed, and the 10-year survival rate after surgery is as high as 97%;

However, when the solid component is more than 50%, and the pathological section finds nipple, mucus, micropapilla and other components, it means that the degree of malignancy is high.

 

Patients who are not recommended for surgery:

Elderly and frail patients: elderly patients older than 85 years old, and patients with poor cardiopulmonary function or unable to take care of themselves are not recommended for surgical resection. Because of this physical condition, even if the operation is successful, the infection that occurs during the observation period after the operation cannot be smoothly passed.

 

(source:internet, reference only)


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