If these symptoms exist for a long time, it indicates that lung cancer has already developed in the upper body, and it may be too late to check in time
I don't know when cancer began to infiltrate our lives quietly, and the cancer rate gradually increased.
When they heard that someone around them had cancer, everyone's first reaction was shock and disbelief, and then they began to feel sympathy and pity for the patient.
In the hearts of most people, cancer is the incarnation of death. It never shows mercy when it takes people's lives!
Cancer may appear in human internal organs, skin, or even blood, so there are many clinical types of cancer.
Among them, the cancer with the highest incidence in China is "lung cancer". The number of new lung cancer patients reaches nearly 700,000 each year, and nearly 40% of lung cancer patients have reached the advanced stage when they are checked and diagnosed in outpatient clinics. The 2-year survival rate of lung cancer is less than 20%.
However, if lung cancer can be detected at an early stage, the prognosis of the patient will be very different, and it may even be completely free from the entanglement of lung cancer.
This not only requires everyone to have regular physical examinations, but also to observe abnormal physical changes at all times, especially for people who have been smoking for a long time and exposed to harmful substances. If the following symptoms exist for a long time, it may be too late to check in time:
- Chronic cough
Strictly speaking, a cough is not a disease, but a response of the body to protect itself. When foreign matter invades the respiratory tract, it can be cleared by coughing.
After the occurrence of respiratory diseases, affected by the increase of pathogens and secretions, patients will have cough symptoms, such as bronchitis, pneumonia, tonsillitis, etc.;
However, after common respiratory infections are treated, not only the disease will be cured, but the cough symptoms will gradually ease and disappear.
Lung cancer is different. Because the cancer will persist and cause irritation, patients will have a long-term cough. In the early stage, irritating cough and dry cough are the most common. In the later stage, symptoms such as coughing up sputum and direct hemoptysis may appear.
- Chest tightness and shortness of breath
Many lung cancer patients have symptoms of chest tightness and shortness of breath in different degrees in the early stage or in the advanced stage of the disease, especially after activities, and the patients always feel that they are not enough.
As the disease progresses, lung function is destroyed and the large airway is blocked by cancer, the patient will gradually develop symptoms of dyspnea, especially for patients with lung cancer accompanied by pleural effusion, and the symptoms of chest tightness will continue to exist.
- Inexplicable shoulder pain
In most cases, shoulder pain is related to neck and shoulder diseases, such as cervical spondylosis, shoulder strain, and frozen shoulder. However, if you have abnormal pain in your shoulder recently and there is no joint disease, you should be alert to the signal from lung cancer.
Because although the lungs have no innervation, there are pleura, peritoneum and nerve plexus around them.
When the cancer invades and compresses the brachial plexus, the pain will radiate to the patient's shoulder, especially the left shoulder pain is clinically common.
- Hoarse voice
Nearly 30% of lung cancer patients have symptoms of hoarseness at different stages of disease development, or even in the early stage. Among them, central lung cancer is more likely to occur, accounting for 40% of all lung cancer patients with hoarseness!
This is not because the cancer has invaded the vocal cords, but because the cancer has compressed or stimulated the recurrent laryngeal nerve, resulting in abnormal pronunciation, but this abnormality will not be accompanied by other respiratory manifestations, such as fever and sore throat.
If you have the above symptoms in the near future, you should seek medical treatment in time for a comprehensive lung examination. Even high-risk groups without any symptoms should have regular lung examinations, so that lung lesions can be detected as early as possible, and timely treatment and treatment can be carried out, especially for long-term smoking and special work (asbestos, petroleum, chemical exposure) The crowd should pay more attention.