The high incidence of lung cancer is among people, especially men, who are over 40 years old, who usually smoke more than one pack per day, and who have smoked for more than 20 years. People in this group should be on high alert if they have the following conditions.
1. Hoarseness
Hoarseness can occur after laryngitis, cold and acute bronchitis, thyroid surgery, pharyngeal surgery, improper vocalization, excessive speech or even heavy smoking and drinking. However, this type of hoarseness can usually be treated symptomatically or cured spontaneously with rest. The hoarseness caused by lung cancer, thyroid cancer and laryngeal cancer is completely different from the above type of hoarseness, especially the lung cancer is more prominent.
2.Fever
When the central type lung cancer grows in the bronchus to semi-obstruction or total obstruction of the lumen, it may produce obstructive pneumonia. The fever is usually around 38℃, which can be easily reduced by anti-inflammatory treatment. However, if the obstructive lesion is not removed, the pneumonia will reappear soon afterwards, forming recurrent pneumonia.
3. Asymptomatic
About 1/3 of lung cancer patients do not have any obvious early symptoms, so they can only rely on regular checkups for early detection of their lesions.
4.Coughing up blood
This is special in early stage lung cancer cases, such as central lung cancer, coughing up blood often occurs in the early and middle stages of the disease, the amount of blood is small, bright red in quality or mixed with foam. The reason for this phenomenon is that the tumor surface is rich in blood vessels. Coughing damages the surface layer and causes the blood vessels to rupture. If there is occasionally coughing up more blood, it is often recurrent or only lasts for a long period of time.
5.Cough
Lung cancer has different symptoms due to its different locations and functional damage. As the tumor grows on the large bronchial tubes and is highly irritating, it is easy to produce cough. However, the degree of coughing varies. About 50% of patients have irritating choking cough with no sputum or a little white foamy sputum. The quality of the sputum changes after secondary infection. People with a pre-existing chronic cough should be alerted if they notice a different nature of cough than usual. Patients with high incidence age should seek early medical consultation when coughing is ineffective after treatment or lasts for a longer period of time, and those with coughing up blood should be consulted even earlier.
Common signs of early stage lung cancer
Early lung cancer usually does not produce symptoms, so it is also called asymptomatic period, which varies from a few months to several years, and patients seldom seek medical treatment at this time, so it is difficult to be detected clinically. Besides those symptoms, due to the compression of lung cancer on other nerves and such, most external signs will also be expressed, so patients and family members should pay more attention to them and seek medical consultation in time.
1.Limited wheezing sound: It is a unilateral limited wheezing sound, especially in the inspiratory stage, which does not disappear after coughing, and is one of the early signs of lung cancer, but it is short-lived and easy to be ignored.
2. Hoarseness appears when lymph node metastasis compresses or invades the recurrent laryngeal nerve (more common on the left side). Laryngoscopic mediastinal examination may show paralysis of vocal cords on the affected side.
3.When the cancer presses the superior vena cava, it is common in right upper lobe small cell carcinoma, and the venous reflux of head and upper limbs is blocked, producing stasis edema and venous anger in head, face and upper body (i.e. superior vena cava compression syndrome).
4.Pulmonary carcinoma in the apical part of the lung, also called supraglottic sulcus, often compresses the cervical sympathetic nerve causing ipsilateral pupil narrowing. The upper eyelid droops, the eyeball sinks, the eye fissure is narrow, the frontal area is less sweaty and other Horner syndrome.
5.Compression of brachial plexus nerve causes ipsilateral shoulder and arm pain, inability to lift, radioactive pain and abnormal sensation in shoulder and fingers, and muscle atrophy.
6. Compression of the esophagus causes difficulty in swallowing and even bronchial fistula, leading to pulmonary infection and death by asphyxiation when the compression of the airway is severe.
7.When compressing phrenic nerve, it will cause paralysis and rise of ipsilateral diaphragm.
8.The tumor can cause reactive pleural fluid when it is close to the pleura, and often produce hemopleural fluid when it invades the pleura.
9.Invasion of vagus nerve by cancer may accelerate heart rate, invasion of conduction system of heart muscle may cause arrhythmia, invasion of pericardium may produce pericardial effusion and symptoms of constrictive pericarditis.
When lung cancer metastasizes through lymphatic tract, enlargement of lymph nodes in the corresponding area and symptoms of pressure in the adjacent corresponding area can be seen. When metastasis through blood channels to brain, bone, liver and other parts of the body, there are corresponding signs.
11.Other signs, joint pain of limbs or hypertrophic pestle finger, polyneuritis, myasthenia gravis, Cushing’s syndrome and gynecomastia hypertrophy, mental abnormalities, etc.
12.Tongue moss is thick and greasy, yellow moss and flaking moss are the next most common, and the number of tongue cracks and mangoes is significantly increased. The sublingual veins are showing, the large veins are full, the small veins are varicose, and the sublingual petechiae and ecchymosis are obviously increasing.
13.Facial color, the facial color of lung cancer patients is mostly pale, lusterless, flushed, purple-red, red like make-up, facial crab claw lines, obscurity, atrophy and other abnormal manifestations, especially the cheeks are prominent. Especially the crab claw lines on the cheeks are aggravated with the increase of clinical stage.
Bronchopulmonary cancer generally does not have special signs in early stage, so timely consultation should be made for scientific diagnosis and differentiation, early detection and early treatment to avoid corresponding signs after the cancer grows to cause bronchial obstruction, and to avoid signs such as pleural effusion, pericardial effusion, diaphragm elevation, chest wall pressure points, compression of superior vena cava and vocal cord paralysis when the cancer invades extra-thoracic lung tissues. Extrathoracic distant metastases can involve various parts of the body and present various signs. Therefore, physical examination of lung cancer patients should be comprehensive and meticulous, especially paying attention to whether there are enlarged lymph nodes in the neck [1] and whether the liver is enlarged and other common metastatic lesions. In the early stage of lung cancer, one should pay more attention to scientific dietary care and conditioning, and listen to the treatment arrangement of physicians to reduce the threat level of lung cancer metastasis and live a healthy and happy life.