Sentido Global: Lung cancer

SentidoNews: Science

LUNG CANCER KILLS NON-SMOKERS TOO
11 August 2005

Lung cancer is one of the most dangerous and widespread diseases in the United States. An estimated 170,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year. Six in ten will die within one year, and eight in ten will die within the first two years after being diagnosed.

It is commonly assumed that only smokers develop lung cancer, because the habit so drastically increases the likelihood of diagnosis. But what is not commonly known is that as many as 17% of new diagnoses are made for lifelong non-smokers. In their cases, the disease may prove still more dangerous, because even physicians will overlook the probability and often look for other explanations, even when symptoms occur.

Lung cancer is difficult to diagnose for a number of reasons: the American healthcare system is not accustomed at present to screen for the disease; even chronic smokers are not routinely offered the chance to undergo scans which could detect growths in the lungs. There also seems to be a feeling that being a lung disease, it can be safely diagnosed by responding aggressively once symptoms occur in the respiratory system.

This is patently wrong: lung cancer can spread with relative ease to the rest of the body, because the processes that occur in the lungs, the nature of their tissue, and the fact that all the body's blood must pass through them, provide broad and varied pathways for metastasis. Cancerous cells from the lungs can break away from loose or spread-out colonies of cells or small tumors, and relocate in other organs, spurring other cancers, in the worst cases in the bones or in the brain.

This last weekend, ABC anchor Peter Jennings died of lung cancer, bringing the disease to light in a new way, and perhaps leading to the announcement by Dana Reeve that she also suffers from the disease, herself a young, healthy non-smoker. [s]