New analysis to help find lung cancer in first stage

September 10, 2019  09:39

A new analysis will allow you to find lung cancer in the first stage - about four years before it can be seen on x-rays. This greatly increases the chances of a complete victory over this disease.

Lung cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer: it is rarely treated, since it is usually found in the later stages. 93% of patients with lung cancer are smokers, and they attribute the characteristic symptoms of coughing, chest discomfort, and shortness of breath to the effects of smoking. When a person has acute chest pains, sudden weight loss and hemoptysis, it is too late to treat it - cancer has time to metastasize throughout the body by this time.

That is why it is so important to identify this disease in the first or second stages, when the probability of cure is still quite high.

A study of 12,000 UK residents showed that a new test can detect cancer four years before it can be seen on x-rays or MRI.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews have proven that using this analysis can detect a significantly larger number of patients with lung tumors in the first and second stages. Thus, the analysis detected 41% of patients in the first and second stages who went through this diagnostic method together with computed tomography.

If the diagnosis was limited only to computed tomography after the onset of symptoms, only 27% of patients learned about their diagnosis in the first or second stages. This means that the remaining 73% of patients had lung cancer in the third or fourth stage, when it is practically incurable.

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