Five symptoms of advanced laryngeal cancer

People who are over 40 years old and have the habit of smoking, if they experience throat discomfort, such as tingling, burning, foreign body sensation or dryness, hoarseness and other symptoms in the throat, should go to the otolaryngology department in time to confirm or rule out laryngeal cancer.

The main symptoms of advanced laryngeal cancer are:

1. Stubborn hoarseness

Hoarseness is the earliest and most common sign of laryngeal cancer. Most laryngeal cancer cases start in the vocal cords. If patients find unexplained hoarseness, symptoms last for more than three weeks and show no signs of gradual improvement, they should go to the hospital for timely medical treatment and have an ENT specialist perform a careful laryngeal endoscopic examination. Patients and health care doctors must not take it lightly because the symptoms are not obvious and delay diagnosis and treatment.

2. Pain in the inner ear

When laryngeal cancer develops to a certain extent and produces ulcers and severe inflammation in the throat, it can cause reflex pain of the nerves. Early vocal cord tumors generally do not produce reflex pain. Reflex pain mainly occurs in patients with supraglottic tumors in the middle and late stages. The most common symptom is pain in the inner ear on the same side.

3. Foreign body sensation in the throat or pain when swallowing

These symptoms are early symptoms of supraglottic laryngeal cancer, but once the tumor originates from the vocal cords and develops to the middle and late stages, it will also cause a foreign body sensation in the throat or swallowing pain. This type of symptom is often not obvious at the beginning of the disease, so patients and doctors are more likely to ignore it.

4. Blood in sputum

Because the tumor carries a large number of abnormal new blood vessels, patients often find blood in their mucus or sputum after coughing. This symptom is mainly seen in patients with supraglottic and subglottic tumors and patients with mid- to late-stage vocal cord tumors. Early vocal cord tumors generally do not cause bleeding.

5. Difficulty breathing

When the tumor deteriorates severely and increases in size at the primary site, it will directly block the trachea and affect breathing or make it difficult for tracheal secretions to be discharged, leading to breathing difficulties. This usually only happens in advanced laryngeal cancer.