Lung cancer is when lung cells become cancerous and grow at an abnormal rate taking over the lungs and spreading to other parts of the body. Lung cancer is one of the leaders in deaths caused by cancer. In this video learn more about this serious condition, its causes and possible treatments.
JUSTIN C.K. DAVIS, M.D.: Hi. My name is Dr. Justin Davis, and today we will be discussing lung cancer. Now lung cancer is when the cells in the lungs become cancerous and grow at an abnormal rate and take over the lungs and can spread to other parts of the body. Lung cancer can be divided into nonsmall-cell lung cancer and small-cell lung cancer; we will discuss the difference later on. Now listen up because this is very important, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States today. More cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year than colon cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and lymphomas combined, that is a lot of deaths due to lung cancer, and most lung cancers, in fact 90% of lung cancers are due to tobacco use in smoking. So what does that tell you? Well that tells you that we have a lot of smokers and we need to do something about that. So if you are smoker, it is time to quit. Now what are the symptoms of lung cancer? Well unfortunately, lung cancer does not usually present until it is at a later stage but once it does, it's spread a little bit more in the lungs and has become more difficult to treat. Some of the more common symptoms may be a chronic cough that is not going away or coughing up blood, may be difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, or if the lung cancer has spread to another part of the body then you may have other problems such as pain in other parts of the body or maybe the other organs are not working as well. So what is the treatment? Well again, the best treatment of course is to prevent it. So if you are a smoker, you should quit because not only may the tobacco smoke increase your chances of getting it but also the secondhand smoke is very dangerous. There are some other things that may cause lung cancer as well like exposure to asbestos or other kinds of environmental toxins but again the most common cause is exposure to cigarette smoke. When we treat lung cancer, it really depends upon exactly what kind of lung cancer and where it is located in the body and how advanced it is. Often, surgery is indicated to remove the parts of the body that have the cancer and the cancer cells as best as possible and also chemotherapy and radiation are also employed often to try to shrink down the tumor size or get rid of some of the cancer cells. So prevention again, do not smoke and avoid people that do smoke, this will greatly reduce your chances of
getting cancer. And even if you do smoke now, it still helps tremendously to stop smoking not just to avoid cancer in the future but also many other problems that are associated with this. So if you think that you may have a problem that could be lung cancer, it may or may not be lung cancer but it probably is something that needs to be evaluated by a doctor so do not wait, go into see them right away.
