What are the more common symptoms of advanced small cell lung cancer

In the late stage of small cell lung cancer, many patients will become speechless or their faces and bodies begin to swell due to worsening of the disease. Such painful torture will make patients with small cell lung cancer lose their pursuit of life and believe that they will not live beyond tomorrow. In such situations, family members need to give the most meticulous care and attention to alleviate the patient's suffering. Below I will introduce the more common symptoms of late-stage small cell lung cancer.

Small cell lung cancer accounts for about 20% of lung cancers. It is highly malignant, has a short doubling time, and metastasizes early and widely.

The most common clinical symptoms of advanced small cell lung cancer are as follows:

1. Facial and neck edema. There is a superior vena cava on the right side of the mediastinum. When the tumor invades the right side of the mediastinum and compresses the superior vena cava, the jugular vein will initially become distended due to poor blood flow. As the disease worsens, the patient will develop facial and neck edema.

2. Shortness of breath and pleural effusion. Patients with advanced lung cancer who have spread the disease will generally experience shortness of breath and difficulty breathing. If the lymph nodes are blocked by the tumor, these tissue fluids will accumulate in the pericardium to form pericardial effusion or in the chest cavity to form pleural effusion.

3. Hoarseness is a typical manifestation of advanced small cell lung cancer. Many lung cancer patients will have this symptom. If the tumor invades the left side of the mediastinum and compresses the recurrent laryngeal nerve, hoarseness will appear. What are the symptoms of advanced small cell lung cancer? Biological treatment can defeat cancer cells. Due to the rapid spread of small cell lung cancer, most advanced small cell lung cancers have already metastasized to a large area and are not suitable for surgery.

Clinically, the mode of chemoradiotherapy combined with biological immunotherapy is often used for the late stage of small cell lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer is slightly more sensitive to chemoradiotherapy, so chemoradiotherapy is widely used in the treatment of late stage small cell lung cancer. 70% of patients with advanced small cell lung cancer have their symptoms alleviated after radiotherapy. External radiotherapy with different doses and fractions can relieve local symptoms of primary or metastatic lesions, but because radiotherapy can also cause damage to normal cells, radiotherapy should be used with caution for patients with advanced small cell lung cancer with very weak body functions. Given that both radiotherapy and chemotherapy have strong toxic side effects, while inhibiting cancer cells, they also cause strong damage to normal cells in the human body, causing the patient's immune function to decline and a series of toxic and side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy to occur, which not only brings pain to the patient, but also affects the smooth progress of treatment.

Clinically, more and more doctors are aware of the importance of improving patients' immune function, improving symptoms, and alleviating patients' pain. Biological immunotherapy has fully exerted its advantages in this regard. Biological immunotherapy combined with radiotherapy and chemotherapy for the treatment of small cell lung cancer can enhance the treatment effect, reduce the toxic and side effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, relieve patients' pain, and improve patients' immune function and enhance their resistance to the disease.