Early symptoms check for lung cancer

The vast majority of lung cancer patients have no symptoms in the early stages. Even if some patients have symptoms, their symptoms are often lacking in characteristics and difficult to attract the attention of patients or even doctors. This is an important reason why lung cancer patients cannot be detected early. In fact, lung cancer patients will have some symptoms in the early stages, but these symptoms are too mild or the patients think they are normal and fail to pay attention to them.

The severity of symptoms in patients with early lung cancer is related to the type, location, size and growth rate of the lung cancer. In summary, the most common symptoms of early lung cancer include:

(1) Cough: Most of the coughs are dry coughs, without sputum or with a small amount of white foamy sputum. Some patients who have been smoking for a long time or have chronic bronchitis may experience changes in the nature of their coughs when they develop lung cancer, such as a more severe, more frequent cough, or a change in the sound of the cough. However, it is often difficult to distinguish between the two, and thus the diagnosis is easily delayed.

(2) Hemoptysis: Tumor invasion and destruction of the capillaries of the bronchial mucosa or rupture of blood vessels in the tumor tissue can lead to blood in the sputum. Clinically, the sputum often contains fresh blood streaks or blood spots, which appear intermittently or repeatedly. Early lung cancer rarely causes whole-mouth hemoptysis. Hemoptysis is more likely to attract the attention of patients than other symptoms, leading to further examination and detection of early lung cancer.

(3) Chest pain: When the tumor is located near the pleura, it is easy to produce irregular dull pain or dull pain. When the tumor directly invades the parietal pleura, the pain is sharper and needle-like, and worsens when breathing or coughing. Few patients with early lung cancer experience pain symptoms. Even if some patients experience pain, the pain site is often inconsistent with the lesion site.

(4) Other symptoms: fever, chest tightness, shortness of breath, clubbing of fingers (toes), bone and joint pain, etc., are rare. Since the early symptoms of lung cancer are hidden and difficult to detect, most early lung cancers are often discovered accidentally during X-rays or CT scans in hospitals due to physical examinations, car accidents, trauma, etc.