What should I do if I have lung cancer

What should I do if I get lung cancer? Most people have never thought about this question. They think that lung cancer is far away from them and it is impossible for them to have anything to do with lung cancer. If you think so, you are wrong. It is not impossible to get lung cancer. It mainly depends on your personal habits and usual preventive measures. Do you want to know the early symptoms of lung cancer and the treatment of lung cancer? Then let's take a look.

Don’t panic even if you have lung cancer. There are many treatments for lung cancer in life. If you are interested, you can continue reading below.

What to do if you have lung cancer

1. Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the main treatment for lung cancer. More than 90% of lung cancer patients need chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is effective for small cell lung cancer, whether in the early or late stages. Even about 1% of early small cell lung cancer can be cured by chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy is also the main treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. The tumor remission rate of chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer is 40% to 50%. Chemotherapy generally cannot cure non-small cell lung cancer, but can only prolong the patient's survival and improve the quality of life.

Chemotherapy is divided into therapeutic chemotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy. Different chemotherapy drugs and different chemotherapy regimens should be selected according to the different histological types of lung cancer.

In addition to killing tumor cells, chemotherapy can also damage normal human cells, so chemotherapy needs to be performed under the guidance of an oncologist. In recent years, the role of chemotherapy in lung cancer is no longer limited to patients with advanced lung cancer who cannot undergo surgery, but is often included in the comprehensive treatment plan for lung cancer as a systemic treatment.

Chemotherapy can inhibit the bone marrow hematopoietic system, mainly the decrease of white blood cells and platelets, which can be treated with granulocyte colony stimulating factor and platelet stimulating factor. Chemotherapy is divided into therapeutic chemotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy.

2. Radiotherapy

1. Treatment principles

Radiotherapy has the best effect on small cell lung cancer, followed by squamous cell carcinoma, and the worst effect on adenocarcinoma. The radiation field for lung cancer radiotherapy should include the primary lesion and the mediastinum of lymph node metastasis. At the same time, drug therapy should be used as an adjuvant.

Squamous cell carcinoma is moderately sensitive to radiation, and the lesions are mainly local invasion, and metastasis is relatively slow, so radical treatment is often used. Adenocarcinoma is less sensitive to radiation and is prone to blood metastasis, so simple radiotherapy is rarely used.

Radiotherapy is a local treatment that is often combined with chemotherapy. The combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy can be done in a synchronous chemoradiotherapy or alternating chemoradiotherapy manner, depending on the patient's condition.

2. Classification of radiotherapy

Depending on the purpose of treatment, it is divided into radical treatment, palliative treatment, preoperative neoadjuvant radiotherapy, postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy and intracavitary radiotherapy.