What is serious tongue cancer?

Tongue cancer is a common malignant tumor that has a serious impact on the body of patients with tongue cancer. The symptoms of tongue cancer can be mild or severe, and severe tongue cancer can even affect a person's life. So what exactly causes tongue cancer, and how does it develop into severe tongue cancer?

Tongue cancer is the most common oral cancer, mostly occurring at the edge of the tongue, followed by the tip, back and root of the tongue, and is often ulcerative or infiltrative. It is generally highly malignant, grows fast, and is highly infiltrative, often affecting the tongue muscles, resulting in limited tongue movement, making it difficult to speak, eat and swallow. Tongue cancer can invade the palatoglossal arch and tonsils posteriorly. In the late stage, tongue cancer can spread to the floor of the mouth and the jawbone, fixing the entire tongue.

Tongue cancer is divided into three stages: early, middle, and late, with the late stage being the most serious. In the late stage, tongue cancer may directly exceed the midline or invade the floor of the mouth, or may infiltrate the lingual periosteum, bone plate, or bone of the mandible. Backward, it may extend to the root of the tongue or the anterior pharyngeal pillar and lateral wall of the pharynx. At this time, tongue movement may be severely restricted, fixed, and saliva may increase and overflow. Eating, swallowing, and speaking are all difficult. The pain is severe and may be reflected to half of the head. In the late stage, tongue cancer may metastasize to the lungs or distant metastases to other parts of the body.

Lung metastasis hazards of late-stage tongue cancer: Lung metastasis is a common site of late-stage tongue cancer metastasis. Patients often experience cough, blood in sputum, low fever, chest pain, shortness of breath and other hazards. If 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 reflux, and eventually it will cause edema of the face and neck, which requires timely treatment. In addition, the hazards of late-stage tongue cancer lung metastasis also include hoarseness and shortness of breath caused by lymph node metastasis compressing or invading the recurrent laryngeal nerve. With the infiltration of cancer cells, patients will experience severe pain in the later stages, as well as malignant effusion or pleural effusion, which can threaten the patient's life.

To sum up, late-stage lung metastasis of tongue cancer is a serious tongue cancer. We should pay attention to reasonable nutrition in daily life, diversify our food as much as possible, eat more high-protein, multi-vitamin, low-animal fat, easily digestible food and fresh fruits and vegetables, do not eat stale, spoiled or irritating foods, eat less smoked, grilled, pickled, fried, and overly salty foods, and match coarse and fine grains in staple foods to ensure nutritional balance.