Red Hot Tips Point: Tips to Control Lung Cancer

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Lung cancer is one of the most lethal, has a dismal prognosis, with an overall survival of 30% per year decreasing to 12% at five years of diagnosis. The first reason is to be found in the very nature of the disease, which is changing very fast.

However, we must also take into account the time of diagnosis, usually late and the treatment has its limitations that despite the progress made in recent years. Given the importance of this condition by their frequency and lethality, have been studied and proposed strategies for early detection.

Chest X-ray, computed tomography (CT) and spiral or helical CT are some of the exercises offered, but have failed to demonstrate their effectiveness to reduce mortality.

Diagnosis and Therapy

Has recently published a study which states that a blood test (based on genetic marks in the cells of cancer of white blood cells) could detect very early stages, but is not about to be used on a large scale. At the moment there are no methods to start the screening of lung cancer in the general population. Once diagnosed, the introduction of treatment should not be delayed.

In this sense, world has done studies that show that the waiting time between diagnosis and initiation of treatment is excessive, thus confirming the perception of patients and professionals. The average wait is more than six weeks. In the National Strategy on Cancer of the National Health System was proposed that the reasonable time to initiate treatment is surgery for two weeks, a week for four weeks for chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Weapons for therapeutic treatment are surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, which are combined in different ways depending on the type of tumor, its extension and if treatment is radical or palliative. But despite all this, the vast majority of patients, after a few months old, show a progression of the disease. For this reason, experts are agreed that, given the difficulty in early diagnosis and treatment efficacy rate, prevention is the most effective tool that is available.

The key is prevention

The prevention of lung cancer is to eliminate or minimize the associated risk factors: smoking and occupational exposure. The snuff is associated with nearly 90% of all lung cancer cases. While recent years have seen a gradual decline in smoking among the adults, the number of smokers among young men and women is alarming.

Experts urge that if they want to reduce the health impact of lung cancer is to insist on measures to reduce exposure to snuff. Although the Tobacco Prevention Act represented a step forward in tobacco control, its irregular application by the permissiveness of smoking in public places with fewer than 100 m2, poor compliance monitoring and other aspects concerning the gaps in health education campaigns and strategies for implementation of methods to help quit smoking, to determine their effects are still low and has an obvious many people unwittingly exposed to the smoke of snuff.

Many studies have shown that passive exposure is an important cause of lung cancer risk and may be responsible for up to 25% of cases among non-smokers. For this reason, it is essential to tighten the measures against smoking, and monitor compliance, with particular attention to population groups in which the consumption of snuff is deeply rooted: women, youth and marginalized sectors.

Environmental Exposure

Exposure to carcinogenic substances is another risk factor that explains 18% of lung cancers in men and less than 1% in women. Although the list of carcinogenic substances is long, all asbestos or asbestos highlights widely used as insulation in construction and other production processes.

The snuff and asbestos act synergistically: a worker exposed to this substance smoking increases the chance of having cancer. Despite this risk, yet still significant quantities of asbestos roofs, walls, ceilings, water pipes and gas ventilation systems in buildings and factories built a few decades ago.

The incidence of lung cancer and pleura (tumor in the outer layer of the lung) because of asbestos has increased in recent years as its latency period (between exposure and onset of illness) is very long, 20 to 30 years, is estimated to continue increasing in coming years.