When your doctor tells you that you have a shadow in your lungs after a physical exam, always remember to ask about the size of the shadow before you faint. If it is more than 3 cm, there is reason to be pessimistic because there is an 85-95% chance that it is a tumor and most of them are in the middle to late stages. If it is less than 3 cm, you must remember this story. In the late 90’s, the Americans had a lung cancer early diagnosis operation, which was basically a free chest X-ray and CT examination for 1000 passers-by on the streets of New York. The low-dose spiral CT results were even more frightening, with 25% of the people having anywhere from 1 to 6 lung nodules in their lungs. Later related studies confirmed that the detection rate of lung nodules can range from 8% (general population) to 51% (high-risk population, for those >55 years old with a long history of smoking) in all types of population screening. By the way, >50% of nodules found on chest radiographs are proven to be false positive results by CT, proving that chest radiographs are very unreliable for census, so remember that you would rather have a chest CT done at your own expense during your annual physical exam. how many nodules found are malignant? It is important to remember that the size is important: <3mm: congratulations, only 0.2% probability of malignant tumor. 4-7 mm: 0.9% chance of malignancy, you have a high probability of winning, review regularly. 8-20 mm: the probability of malignancy rises to 18%, you need to find a good doctor to analyze your specific situation, most doctors will advise you to have surgery to defuse the time bomb. 20-30 mm: 50% probability of malignancy, basically hurry up and ask for a good surgeon to prepare for inpatient surgery. >Be prepared to fight with lung cancer for a long time and maintain a revolutionary optimistic attitude. At present, the integrated multidisciplinary treatment represented by internal targeted therapy and minimally invasive surgical technology has substantially improved the treatment effect of lung cancer. Both doctors and patients should take Chairman Mao’s strategy of fighting a protracted war as the guiding ideology, dragging the tumor into a chronic disease, and as long as you persist through 5 years (3 years less than the war), your probability of dying from lung cancer recurrence is less than 5%. This is why the clinical doctor always hangs on the 5-year survival rate, not that he doesn’t care about you after 5 years, but after 5 years you should come out from the shadow of cancer by yourself, don’t have the physical cancer cells under control, but the psychological cancer cells are still breeding.