Lung Cancer Signs & Symptoms

Lung cancer is responsible for about one-quarter of annual cancer deaths in the United States. Lung cancer is a deadly disease, with half of patients dying within the first year of diagnosis. Each year, there are about 200,000 new cases of lung cancer in the U.S. Smoking accounts for 9 out of 10 new lung cancer cases. Other risk factors include genetic factors such as family history of lung cancer, and environmental factors such as exposure to asbestos, fibers, air pollution and radon gas.

Identification

The symptoms of lung cancer are chest pain, coughing up blood, persistent cough, shortness of breath, wheezing, pneumonia and voice changes. The symptoms are similar for both types of lung cancer, namely, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

Considerations

More than 90 percent of patients with lung cancer will have some symptoms at presentation. However, in many cases, patients have no symptom at all and their tumors are detected during a routine chest X-ray.

Types

Symptoms and signs of lung cancers are often classified into those associated with the primary lesion, those associated with distant metastasis and those associated with paraneoplastic syndromes.

Coughing

Lung cancers often occur in central airways, which subsequently leads to pneumonia or lymph node enlargement, and eventually to coughing.

Dyspnea

Dyspnea, or shortness of breath, occurs in two-thirds of lung cancer patients and is usually associated with increasing cough and sputum.

Symptoms of metastatic disease

Some patients display symptoms indicating that their lung cancer has spread to other organs in the body. For instance, some patients may experience excruciating pain in the bones because they have metastatic cancer there.

Resources

• Lung cancer sign and symptoms

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