4 ms·
My Mum smoked a pack a day for 30 years, quit when she was about 50, and passed away a year ago from Lung Cancer at the age of 67. The kicker with lung cancer
by grecy 7y ago
My Mum smoked a pack a day for 30 years, quit when she was about 50, and passed away a year ago from Lung Cancer at the age of 67.
The kicker with lung cancer is that it doesn't really have any symptoms, and most people don't know they've got it until the cancer has metastasized and shows up somewhere else. That's more-or-less a death sentence.
Please do yourself a favor and get tested every ~6 months. (I know there are a lot of people that say false positives do more harm than good, and I still believe you're better to get tested if you smoked a pack a day for >10 years)
- nradov 7y agoA friend's mom went to see her doctor complaining of back pain, only to find it was a lung cancer tumor pressing on her back. She died a month later.
- Engineering-MD 7y agoWhat is the basis of this recommendation? I appreciate the desire to catch lung cancer early, but I dont think your suggestion is particularly based on evidence. I am by no means a lung cancer expert, but currently there is contention about whether lung cancer screening in smokers is worthwhile, and I doubt at 6 monthly intervals. Some studies have shown benefits from screening for smokers, but I dont think any high quality evidence exist which shows a clear benefit of screening. There are options for screening, chest xray, CT chest. A CT chest is more sensitive than a chest xray but doing it every 6 months is going to cause much more harm than good. My more general point is that these are recommendations which need to be evidence based, and doing more harm than good through false positives, excess radiation exposure, etc is a real risk. I dont think its helpful to make suggestions that are not based on evidence.
- DSingularity 7y agoThank you.
- edejong 7y agoFrequent screening reduces mortality due to lung cancer by 24%: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1911793 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1911793
- Engineering-MD 7y agoInteresting find! I have had a quick skim. Couple of quick points: a) it was published yesterday, which means there is insufficient time to have a good critical appraisal. b) looking at the confidence intervals, although there is significance in men, there is not one in men, and the confidence interval is quite wide c) all cause mortality is similar in both groups despite screening d) the follow up is only 10 years after first CT. the effect of radiation from these multiple CTs is unlikely to have reached maximum effect in damage to tissues/new neoplasms. This may also explain the increased non lung cancer mortality. e) no mention is made of morbidity (although I might have missed it) which is a huge importance. Overall, it’s unsurprising that in a group screened regularly for lung cancer that lung cancer incidence increases but mortality drops. The problem is the other effects of screening which this paper doesn’t seem to focus on. I don’t think this actually shows screening is particularly worth it especially given it’s caveats.
- edejong 7y agoThanks! I really like this critical analysis. Tbh, I didn’t read the article but it was on the Dutch news this morning.
- paulpauper 7y agothat is because the residual carcinogens remain even if lung functionality returns to normal and the lungs appear normal. Very similar to asbestos cancer that occurs decades after exposure in otherwise healthy individuals.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoNot to undermine your point, just an opposite case. My mother is 70, smoked a packet a day for about 40 tears, last 10 years about 7 or 8 a day and she is healthy as a horse. Last check ups 4 months ago. It really all depends.
- agumonkey 7y agoHonestly, your mom is just enjoying exceptional genes or something.