Patients with pleural effusion from lung cancer need to be differentiated as to what stage it belongs to. If it is a malignant pleural effusion caused by lung cancer, it is a sign that the lung cancer is stage 4, and if it is simply a pleural effusion, it may be stage 1.
Patients with lung cancer who develop pleural effusion are divided into two situations. First, pleural effusion is associated with lung cancer and is medically known as malignant pleural fluid, which requires cytologic identification and can be diagnosed as malignant pleural fluid if cancer cells are found in the pleural fluid, a condition that indicates that the patient’s lung cancer has stepped into stage 4, which is often referred to as advanced lung cancer. In the case of advanced lung cancer, most treatments are no longer effective and can only try to improve the patient’s quality of life as well as extend his or her survival. It is recommended that patients should cooperate with treatment with a positive attitude to try to extend their survival.
The second situation is rare, where the patient has lung cancer and also has pleural effusion, but the two conditions are not correlated, and the pleural effusion is due to simple infection or some other disease, which has no impact on the divergence of lung cancer and is not directly related to lung cancer. The lung cancer divergence should be judged at this time based on some circumstances such as the size of the tumor and whether metastasis from other sites has occurred.