Cancer symptoms are quite varied and depend on where the cancer is located, where it has spread, and how big the tumor is. Lung cancer symptoms may take years before appearing, usually after the disease is in an advanced stage.
Many symptoms of lung cancer affect the chest and air passages. These include:
- Persistent or intense coughing
- Pain in the chest shoulder, or back from coughing
- Changes in color of the mucus that is coughed up from the lower airways (sputum)
- Difficulty breathing and swallowing
- Hoarseness of the voice
- Harsh sounds while breathing (stridor)
- Chronic bronchitis or pneumonia
- Coughing up blood, or blood in the sputum
If the lung cancer spreads, or metastasizes, additional symptoms can present themselves in the newly affected area. Swollen or enlarged lymph nodes are common and likely to be present early. If cancer spreads to the brain, patients may experience vertigo, headaches, or seizures. In addition, the liver may become enlarged and cause jaundice and bones can become painful, brittle, and broken. It is also possible for the cancer to infect the adrenal glands resulting in hormone level changes.
As lung cancer cells spread and use more of the body's energy, it is possible to present symptoms that may also be associated with many other ailments. These include:
- Fever
- Fatigue
- Unexplained weight loss
- Pain in joints or bones
- Problems with brain function and memory
- Swelling in the neck or face
- General weakness
- Bleeding and blood clots
How is lung cancer diagnosed and staged?
Physicians use information revealed by symptoms as well as several other procedures in order to diagnose lung cancer. Common imaging techniques include chest X-rays, bronchoscopy (a thin tube with a camera on one end), CT scans, MRI scans, and PET scans.
Physicians will also conduct a physical examination, a chest examination, and an analysis of blood in the sputum. All of these procedures are designed to detect where the tumor is located and what additional organs may be affected by it.
Although the above diagnostic techniques provided important information, extracting cancer cells and looking at them under a microscope is the only absolute way to diagnose lung cancer. This procedure is called a biopsy. If the biopsy confirms lung cancer, a pathologist will determine whether it is non-small cell lung cancer or small cell lung cancer.
After a diagnosis is made, an oncologist will determine the stage of the cancer by finding out how far the cancer has spread. The stage determines which choices will be available for treatment and informs prognosis. The most common cancer staging method is called the TNM system. T (1-4) indicates the size and direct extent of the primary tumor, N (0-3) indicates the degree to which the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, and M (0-1) indicates whether the cancer has metastasized to other organs in the body. A small tumor that has not spread to lymph nodes or distant organs may be staged as (T1, N0, M0), for example.
For non-small cell lung cancer, TNM descriptions lead to a simpler categorization of stages. These stages are labeled from I to IV, where lower numbers indicate earlier stages where the cancer has spread less. More specifically:
- Stage I is when the tumor is found only in one lung and in no lymph nodes.
- Stage II is when the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes surrounding the infected lung.
- Stage IIIa is when the cancer has spread to lymph nodes around the trachea, chest wall, and diaphragm, on the same side as the infected lung.
- Stage IIIb is when the cancer has spread to lymph nodes on the other lung or in the neck.
- Stage IV is when the cancer has spread throughout the rest of the body and other parts of the lungs.
Small cell lung cancer has two stages: limited or extensive. In the limited stage, the tumor exists in one lung and in nearby lymph nodes. In the extensive stage, the tumor has infected the other lung as well as other organs in the body.
Source:http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/
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