Treatment of Lung Cancer
Treatment for these patients consists of a combination of several techniques that are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Each of them will be more effective than the other depending on the type of cancer and the stage where it is located. In fact, treatment depends on four conditions: the type and extent of spread of the cancer, the patient’s health status and functional status of the various body systems (heart, liver, kidney, neurological etc.)
Surgery is the treatment modality most likely to be healing, so she always uses that all cancer can be removed and the patient’s respiratory status tolerate the removal of the portion of lung that need removing.
Small cell lung cancer after surgery rare, since almost always diagnosed extensive stage, when only limited is operable. Approximately half of non-small cell lung cancers can be removed because of its size. It is therefore essential that there are no metastases to the lymph nodes of the central chest (mediastinum) are free of cancer and the cancer has not invaded inextirpable structures as the trachea, aortic or pleura.
You can remove only a small portion of the lung, if the cancer is very localized, to be known as wedge resection or segmentectomy.
If you removed a lobe of the lung is called lobectomy.
If you remove the entire lung, one speaks of pneumonectomy.
After the operation the patient is admitted for one or two weeks. Some require chest physiotherapy to restore normal lung capacity soon.
After this period will return to his home with some restrictions.
Among the possible complications of the intervention are haemorrhage, infection of wounds and pneumonia.
Radiotherapy uses high energy X-radiation to kill cancer cells. It uses a device called a linear accelerator which sends rays to the affected area only.
This treatment is used, sometimes as a primary or principal on those patients who can not undergo surgery. In this case, is not intended to cure but to slow disease progression, although some cases are actually cured without operation, with only radiotherapy.
Radiotherapy in the lung is generally used to relieve an airway obstruction leading to cancer.
When radiotherapy is used as secondary treatment after surgery, primarily used to destroy those cells could not be removed.
Another utility that is used for radiation therapy is to relieve symptoms caused by cancer, including pain, difficulty swallowing, and so on.
Chemotherapy is the first treatment option in most cases of small cell cancer. It can easily control the symptoms, which are often highly charged in this kind of cancer. However, cures are exceptional and most cases fall after one or two years.
Not all patients may be because surgery will depend on whether they have sufficient respiratory capacity to withstand a emerge of some or the entire lung and how their condition.
In lung cancer, often used a combination of chemotherapeutic drugs. Some of these drugs can be given by mouth or by vein. When they reach the bloodstream, these drugs are spread throughout the body and act against cancer cells, destroying it. For this reason it is very useful in those cancers that have spread to other areas.
Chemotherapy can be given as primary treatment or as therapy to aid surgery. Many times, chemotherapy is administered before surgery, with the intention of reducing the volume of the cancer and paves the way for a surgeon. Even sometimes inoperable lung cancers become operable after several months of chemotherapy. It is also possible to receive chemotherapy after surgery, even when the entire cancer was removed successfully. The reason is that this strategy avoids a relapse rate of just crunodes and more patients in the long term. We know this kind of cancer treatment as adjuvant chemotherapy.
The choice of treatment of first or second line depends on the type of cancer, varies between cancer and non-small cell or small cell.
The most common side effects that occur as a result of the use of chemotherapy are nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, hair loss and mouth sores. Along with the chemotherapeutic drugs, in other cases they decrease or disappear are the side effects of the former.
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