What are the diagnostic methods for lung cancer? Several commonly used methods for diagnosing lung cancer

Lung cancer is one of the malignant tumors with the fastest growing incidence and mortality rate, and it poses the greatest threat to human health and life. It can cause patients to experience many uncomfortable symptoms, such as cough, blood in sputum, hemoptysis, fever, weight loss, cachexia, etc. Before treatment, these commonly used methods for diagnosing lung cancer should be performed.

The cause of lung cancer is not yet completely clear, but a large amount of data shows that it is related to long-term heavy smoking. People who smoke heavily for a long time have a much higher probability of developing lung cancer than non-smokers. Of course, it is also related to air pollution, occupational and environmental exposure, ionizing radiation, previous chronic lung infections, etc. So what are the commonly used methods for diagnosing lung cancer in modern society?

1 The first of several commonly used methods for diagnosing lung cancer in modern society is bronchoscopy, which is an important measure for diagnosing lung cancer. As long as a bronchoscope is used, the pathological changes of the bronchial endothelium and the lumen can be directly observed. If a tumor or cancerous infiltration is seen in a patient, tissue can be taken for pathological section examination, or bronchial secretions can be collected for cytological examination, which can clearly diagnose and determine the histological type.

2 The second method is to conduct a cytological examination. Most patients with primary lung cancer can find scattered cancer cells in their sputum, and then the histological type of the cancer cells can be determined. Therefore, this sputum cytological examination is a simple and effective method for lung cancer screening and diagnosis. However, the positive rate of sputum cytological examination for central lung cancer can reach 72-90%, and the positive rate of sputum examination for peripheral lung cancer is about 50%. Therefore, a negative sputum cytological examination cannot rule out the possibility of lung cancer.

3 The third method is to perform ECT examination. ECT bone imaging can detect bone metastases relatively early. If both X-rays and bone imaging have positive findings, such as lesions, the bone reaction is static and the metabolism is inactive, then the bone imaging will be negative, while the X-ray will be positive. The two complement each other and can improve the diagnosis rate. However, it should be noted that there is a 20 to 30 percent false positive rate in ECT bone imaging for diagnosing bone metastasis of lung cancer, so patients with positive ECT bone imaging also need to undergo MRI scans of the bones in the positive area.

These are some of the commonly used methods for diagnosing lung cancer in modern society. Therefore, patients with a long history of smoking and early symptoms of lung cancer should use these methods. They can detect and diagnose whether they have lung cancer as early as possible. If so, they should receive treatment to avoid more serious consequences.