In smoggy days, one cannot hide, nor can one escape second-hand smoke.
Speaking of our lungs, it is really full of disasters…
Lung cancer is the cancer with the highest incidence rate and the highest mortality rate in China. When many patients show symptoms, they are often already in advanced stage, and the retreatment effect is definitely not very good.
However, if lung cancer can be found early, the 5-year survival rate after treatment can reach more than 90%. In other words, the time of discovery is very important to the therapeutic effect of patients.
How can detect lung cancer early?
The best way to achieve [early detection] is lung cancer screening.
The so-called screening is just like using a sieve to filter things at ordinary times, leaving those who are qualified behind and those who are not qualified to leak out.
Lung cancer screening is to put asymptomatic healthy people into the [sieve] and use some examination methods to filter to find lung cancer patients.
Low Dose Chest CT, Sharp Tool for Lung Cancer Screening
Unfortunately, early lung cancer often has no symptoms, or only some common symptoms, such as dry cough, sometimes similar to a cold. Therefore, judging according to symptoms is often unreliable and more advanced examination methods must be used.
In the past, medical conditions were relatively backward, and lung cancer was only examined by chest X-rays. This method is very unsafe and easy to miss or misdiagnose. With the progress of science and technology, a new examination method [low-dose chest CT] was born, and now more and more experts suggest using it to replace chest X-rays.
The United States has conducted an experiment on screening lung cancer with low-dose chest CT, which includes 500,000 people. Preliminary results show that patients with lung cancer found by low-dose CT screening are 16% less likely to die of lung cancer than patients found by chest plain film examination.
Not everyone needs to be screened for lung cancer.
Lung cancer screening is not suitable for everyone.
For the high-risk population of lung cancer, it is currently recommended to do low-dose chest CT once a year for screening.
But because lung cancer screening is to find early lung cancer patients in asymptomatic people, If the physical condition is poor and even there are serious cardiopulmonary diseases, even if early lung cancer is screened out, the treatment may not be completed, which will not bring much benefit to the survival of the patients. Therefore, we recommend high-risk people in good health to do a good job of screening, which is the most cost-effective.
What conditions are met even if lung cancer is at high risk?
With the following characteristics, namely, lung cancer high-risk population, lung cancer screening is recommended:
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Age ≥ 55 years old, smoking ≥ 30 packs of years, and quitting smoking for less than 15 years;
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Age ≥ 50 years old, smoking ≥ 20 package years, there are additional risk factors for lung cancer ().
Package year refers to the number of packages smoked per day multiplied by the number of years of smoking. For example, 30 package years can be two situations:
Smoking 3 packs of cigarettes every day for 10 years (3 × 10);
I smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day for 10 years, then I smoked 1 pack a day for 10 years (2 × 10 + 1 × 10).
What should ordinary people do?
The simplest and most effective way for ordinary people to prevent lung cancer is to quit smoking. The best time to quit smoking is now. The sooner you quit smoking, the sooner you will benefit.
The number one cause of lung cancer is tobacco exposure. Needless to say, smokers who smoke secondhand smoke will also increase the risk of lung cancer.
You said it was too hard to quit smoking?
In fact, even if you can’t quit completely, even if you smoke a few fewer cigarettes, it is also a good thing, although the effect is not as good as quitting smoking completely.
If you really can’t quit, you may as well go to a special smoking cessation clinic. Of all the methods, there is always one suitable for you.
Smog often exists in life. Do you need to screen for lung cancer?
At present, it seems that there is no need.
Although smog is a cause of lung cancer, lung cancer screening requires a lot of time and energy, and chest CT also has certain radiation. Scientists have not yet found out how cost-effective lung cancer screening is for ordinary people other than high-risk groups. Therefore, it is not recommended to screen lung cancer just because of smog.