PT Health Life- Lung cancer is the most common cancer and is difficult to detect early, so treatment results are often very low, causing many deaths. But if cancer in general and lung cancer in particular are detected early, the chance of effective treatment and cure is very high.
Early detection of lung cancer is very important. Because early-stage lung cancer has poor or no symptoms, regular screening will often help detect lung cancer early.
1. Methods of diagnosing lung cancer
Like other types of cancer, lung cancer in the early stages has almost no typical symptoms, so it is difficult to recognize and easily confused with other respiratory diseases . Until some obvious symptoms such as persistent cough, coughing up blood , difficulty breathing, chest pain… then the disease is in a late stage, treatment becomes more difficult.
Therefore, screening to detect the disease when there are no symptoms, and if the disease is present, at an early stage helps treat the disease more effectively. Research results show that early detection of lung cancer helps increase the cure rate, increase recovery rate, increase survival time and reduce medical costs for patients and society as a whole.
After the patient is clinically examined, lymph nodes in the armpit, neck, lung symptoms, metastatic symptoms are detected, the following diagnostic measures will be prescribed by the doctor:
1- Sputum test: For people who cough with phlegm, doctors will prescribe a sputum test. This is one of the methods to determine whether there are cancer cells in it or not. In addition, the doctor may ask the patient to perform a biopsy to check whether the tumor in this location is benign or malignant.
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2- Chest X-ray: This is a method to detect and evaluate the characteristics of lung parenchymal tumors. Assess the involvement of the trachea and main bronchi and detect chest wall invasion. In addition, chest X-ray evaluates lymph nodes and invasion of the hilar area on both sides and mediastinum. Detect tumor-induced pneumonia and tumor-induced pneumonia and pleural effusion.
3- Multi-sequence CT scanner: This is a method to detect tumors and evaluate the trachea and main bronchi. Detect chest wall invasion, assess invasion, hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes. Additionally assess vascular invasion, detect metastases and localize and guide tumor biopsy.
4- MRI scan: This is a method to evaluate invasion of the chest wall and interlobar groove. Detection to assess invasion of the mediastinum, spine, and spinal canal. Evaluate hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes in patients with unclear CT scans and differentiate tumors located in the atelectasis area and determine biopsy site. Detect spinal, brain, and adrenal metastases.
In summary, immediately after the appearance of symptoms suspected of cancer with manifestations in the respiratory tract (cough, chest tightness, etc.), patients need to see a doctor as soon as possible for early diagnosis and treatment. .
The doctor will conduct a general health examination, then prescribe paraclinical tests such as: Imaging diagnosis: An abnormal tumor can be seen through X-rays, MRI, CT…. Next is a lung biopsy to obtain imaging diagnostic results as the basis for the doctor to determine the tumor location. Then, a biopsy is performed to the lung tissue containing the tumor to obtain a sample. Once the diagnosis results confirm that the cells are cancerous, the patient will be assigned additional tests to other organs to determine whether the cancer has spread or not, what stage it is at…
2. Some notes on lung cancer diagnosis
According to research, most lung cancers are related to a history of active or passive smoking. However, lung cancer can still appear in non-smoking patients due to other causes such as: family factors, polluted living environment, polluted air,…
Currently, there are advances in medicine, there are many new and more effective methods for early diagnosis and effective treatment of cancer in general and lung cancer in particular. These include low-dose tomography, bronchoscopy, surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy.
Therefore, regular health check-ups are extremely important. According to recommendations, screening is indicated for people at high risk of lung cancer. People in the recommended group are between the ages of 55 and 74 with a smoking history of over 30 packs/year and may currently continue to smoke or have quit smoking within the past 15 years.
In the age group ≥ 50, smoke more than 20 packs/year and have one of the following risk factors such as: Family history of lung cancer, people with previous chronic lung diseases such as: COPD , tuberculosis…the patient currently has a cancer…Regular screening is also required.
