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so how did you get lung cancer and the
basic answer of that is that you smoke
cigarettes the exposure of cigarette
smoke over time will cause respiratory
activity and to acquire multiple
mutations and the effects of these on
tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes
eventually end up with a cell which is
unable to be controlled by the normal
physiological mechanisms and an immune
surveillance of abnormal cells and will
replicate and cause our cancer and
ninety percent of these cases are due to
cigarette smoking there are other
factors which also will influence the
development of lung cancer for example
we know that if you've been exposed to
asbestos in combination with smoking
cigarettes that becomes scientistic with
increasing your chance of lung cancer we
also know exposure to radioactive gases
such as radon could increase your chance
of lung cancer and in fact in Cornwall
in the UK the houses built there have to
have a radon prevention membrane built
underneath them to prevent the radon gas
which is fairly common in Cornwall
seeping into the house because of this
risk of increased risk of cancer in
addition things are ready for a fitted
lungs for the lungs a family history of
cancer various chemical exposures
apparently diesel exhaust may increase
your chance of cancer there all
contribute towards the chance of getting
cancer an important point is that if you
have chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease ie
smoking rates lung damage the chance of
lung cancer is increased over and above
just the effect of smoking itself so
there's something about the information
is present in patients with COPD which
makes lung cancer more likely to develop
compared to smokers who don't develop
COPD but another important point is that
not all of lung cancer is due to smoking
if out 10% occur in non-smokers and
there's a specific type of disease which
is adenocarcinoma which tends to present
in non-smoking middle-aged women and
what happens is that there's somebody
will present with a bit of a cough a
chest x-ray will be done and it was
shown multiple metastasis of
adenocarcinoma throughout both lungs and
characteristically that would be in a
non-smoking population so in general how
would you right recognize somebody
so well they tend to be an elderly
person aged 75 their male slightly more
predominant than female but actually
females this lung cancer is still a very
common as we said it's the commonest
fatal disease lung cancer in females
much more common than breast cancer as a
cause of death in women so somebody who
smokes who's aged over 50 years has a
lung mass on the x-ray you must exclude
cancers the course if they have systemic
symptoms which might suggest they have a
cancer and those are mainly weight loss
kill look looking cachectic no appetite
fatigue and general malaise feeling ill
and if they have specific symptoms
suggestive of a cancer such as car for
hemoptysis then your suspicion is even
more higher so as you see on this and
there's an x-ray with somebody the
lesion the top of the left lung there a
smoker you must think that lung cancer
is potential cause for that in these
situations it may not be the cause but
it needs to be excluded the major
problem with the clinical presentation
of lung cancer is that the symptoms that
they can present what the patients
present with are very very variable as a
consequence they can present to any
specialty not just chest physician they
presented neurologists to bone doctors
etc etc and as a consequence everyone
who deals with patients who are in the
age range which may have cancer needs to
be aware of lung cancers potential
diagnosis
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