Your Lung Cancer Life Expectancy Rises If You Take Care Of Yourself
Cancer is a terrible disease. If not caught soon enough it can spread through the body, becoming more aggressive as it grows. Lung cancer is one of the most aggressive kinds of cancer. It starts in the chest and without treatment it spreads quickly through the body. The lung cancer life expectancy without treatment is less than five percent. However, depending on what stage of lung cancer a patient has, with treatment their chances of survival rise significantly to about a 45% chance of survival. Treatment is the key to ensure that a person with cancer survives the disease. Many people are not aware of the fast growing number of deaths associated with lung cancer. At present over one million people die every year from this terrible disease. It is interesting to note that there is a higher percentage of men with lung cancer than women, and lung cancer is the number two cancer killer of men, second only to prostate cancer. For women, the number one killer is breast cancer, however lung cancer is slowly climbing the ladder towards becoming the number two killer of women as well. Because lung cancer life expectancy is so low if untreated, it is important that anyone with a lung cancer diagnosis, no matter how severe, seek immediate treatment. There are two categories of lung cancer, they are called small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. Despite common misconception the lung cancer life expectancy for a person with small cell lung cancer is no better than someone with non-small cell lung cancer. That is because the names are not derived from the size of the cancer growth, but the size of the cells. Small cell is simply smaller cells, while non-small are larger cells. In fact, non-small cell lung cancer can be more aggressive depending on the type of cancer, such as oat cell lung cancer. The number one cause of lung cancer is smoking and the lung cancer life expectancy lowers for the diagnosed person who continues to smoke. Even with treatment, if the person continues to smoke they are adding to the damage to their lungs. What's more, smoking lowers the immune system, hinders proper breathing, and causes slower healing, which hinders the treatment used by doctors. It is important for a person being treated to do everything that they can to keep themselves healthy during the process because it is very hard on the body. |
