The lungs also are known as the respiratory system, where the oxygen is absorbed and helps a person breathe. Two main types of lung cancer, the Nonsmall cell, and small cell. They usually treated in different ways.

What Causes lung cancer?

  • Cigarette Smoking, and E-Cigarettes
  • Shisha smoking
  • secondhand smoke (passive smoking)
  • Chemicals such as asbestos
  • Inherited genetic mutations
  • Age
  • Family history

Signs and symptoms of

  • A change in a smoker’s usual cough, or a persistent cough
  • A bright red or rust-colored blood in sputum
  • Hoarseness of voice Shortness of breath
  • A dull ache in the chest or pain while breathing deeply
  • The general feeling of being unwell such as tiredness and general aches and pains. Loss of appetite and weight loss
  • Fatigue
  • Difficulty or pain in swallowing

Tests used to diagnose lung cancer & determine the extent of the tumor

  • Chest x-ray
  • Blood tests
  • Sputum cytology (looking for cancer cells in your sputum through a microscope)
  • Bronchoscopy ( a tube that is thin and flexible, like a telescope, that is used to look into your respiratory passages)
  • Mediastinoscopy and mediastinotomy
  • Tissue biopsy
  • CT scan
  • PET Scan
  • Bone scan
  • Molecular and  biomarker testing

Lung cancer treatment

Treatment options depend on the type of lung cancer, the size, and location of the tumor, whether cancer has spread, and the person’s overall health. The basic options for treating lung cancer are

  • Surgery: Aim of the surgery is to completely remove the lung tumor with a surrounding border of healthy tissue, called a margin, and nearby lymph nodes. Procedures to remove lung cancer include :
    • Wedge resection: The surgeon removes a small section of lung that contains the tumor along with a margin of healthy tissue
    • Segmental resection: is the removal of a larger portion of the lung, but not an entire lobe
    • Lobectomy: is to remove the whole lobe of one lung
    • Pneumonectomy: is to remove an entire lung
  •  Radiotherapy: Radiation therapy which is a local treatment uses high-energy rays from a machine located outside the body to destroy and kills the remaining tumor cells in breast area after surgery. Radiation therapy may be used before surgery or after surgery, and It’s often combined with chemotherapy treatments. Radiation therapy may also help relieve symptoms, such as pain.
  • Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is the use of a cytotoxic chemical drug which delivered through the bloodstream to reach and to destroy cancer cells throughout the body chemotherapy can be given as a tablet or injection. Chemotherapy is used to treat the patient with advanced or metastatic lung cancer. Chemotherapy may be used before surgery to shrink the tumor and make them easier to remove, or after surgery alone or in combination with radiotherapy, also it can be used to relieve pain and other symptoms.
  • Targeted therapy: Using Drugs to target specific molecules involved in the growth and spread of cancer cells by blocking the growth and spread of cancer cells while limiting damage to healthy cells. Targeted therapy drugs are used to treat people with advanced or recurrent lung cancer in people whose cancer cells have specific genetic mutations To find the most effective treatment; your doctor may run specialized tests to identify genes, proteins, and other factors specific to your tumor.
  • Immunotherapy: It is a treatment that uses drugs using the immune system to target specific molecules involved in the growth, a spread of cancer cells. The body’s disease-fighting immune system may not attack your cancer because the cancer cells produce proteins that blind the immune system cells. Immunotherapy works by interfering with that process. Immunotherapy treatments generally reserved for people with advanced lung cancer.
  • palliative or supportive care

Before taking any treatment, it is better to ask your doctor these questions?

  • Is my diagnosis confirmed?
  • Which type of lung cancer do I have?
  • What is the stage of my disease?
  • What treatment plan do you recommend and what benefit I will get?
  • When will the treatment begin? What will be the intended duration of therapy? When will it stop?
  • What will be the possible side effects? How likely are these to happen?
  • What is available to manage my symptoms?