Preliminary Signs of Lung Cancer

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Dr. Kenneth Fink. I'm a medical oncologist in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Zimmer Cancer Center, New Hanover Regional Medical Center. Early signs of lung cancer are important for patients, especially smokers, to know about and think about. Anyone who's smoking is going to be at very high risk for lung cancer. Of course your doctors and perhaps your relatives everyone else who knows you, if you're a smoker, will tell you to stop smoking. We all know that that's going to cause cancer for a high percentage of patients. Early signs of lung cancer are very common. Things like coughing, maybe some chest pain. These are all rather common symptoms that people have. Perhaps the more important thing is are the symptoms persistent? Are they going on for a week or two weeks? Or even months at a time? If that's happening then that's certainly a time to get in to see a doctor or get an x-ray. We'd like to be able to detect a lung cancer before any symptoms occur. Or before any signs. Because once there are symptoms there could be a perhaps more invasive disease, tumors that have gotten bigger and are causing more problems. But still, if a person's just having a bit of a cough. If they see a little bit of blood when they cough. A little bit of blood in their sputum and that's just not clearing up, obviously that would be of much more concern. It still could be an early sign and still needs to be, a person would definitely need to be checked for if that were occurring. Something like chest pain could also be going on. There could be, there are definitely some pain fibers in the lung, and as a tumor grows in the lung it can definitely cause a little bit of discomfort. So I'd say chest pain and cough, a little blood in the sputum. Those would be the early signs of lung cancer."