Lung Cancer

What once was a man’s disease is now quickly becoming a woman’s disease. Lung cancer kills more women every year than breast cancer, and will kill more than 70,000 women every year in the United States. The fact is 90% of all lung cancer deaths among women are from smoking. Everyone knows the dangers of smoking today, yet 1 out of 5 women in the United States are still smoking. Even if a woman has been smoking for years, it is still beneficial in lowering the risk of cancer for her to quit. In a study from The Journal of the American Medical Association, it was revealed that women that smoke are two times more likely to get lung cancer than men. When we think about lung cancer many times we assume that smoking is the cause, but it should be noted that 15 percent of all lung cancers among women are not related to smoking.

When one is experiencing symptoms of lung cancer they may include, trouble breathing, coughing up blood, chest pain, a loss of desire for food, weight loss, and exhaustion. There are some forms of lung cancer, which do not show any noticeable signs until the disease is quite advanced and has spread to other organs.

Lung cancer is sometimes diagnosed with an ex-ray, although the most common method is with a bronchoscopy. When a bronhoscopy is used a thin flexible tube is inserted down the patient’s airway. This process not only allows a doctor to see inside the lung, but he may also use this same procedure to perform a biopsy. If cancer is detected a CT scan may be preformed to determine if the cancer has spread to other organs. 

There are two types of lung cancer. The first type is small cell cancer, and the second is large cell cancer. Chemotherapy is the standard treatment for small cell lung cancer. The treatment chosen is based on the fact that small cell cancer, in most cases, is found to be of the fast moving category. Small cell cancer usually spreads to quickly for surgery to be practical. For other types of lung cancer, surgery is used to remove the tumor when possible. The type of cancer, which is present, will be the determining factor as to which treatment is followed