Gathered in congress this weekend in Lille, French pulmonologists are issuing an alert: according to a study carried out every ten years, lung cancer is progressing exponentially, especially in women. Another result is particularly worrying: if an overwhelming majority of these cancers remain linked to tobacco, more and more non-smokers are affected.
These patients who have never touched a cigarette in their life are almost twice as numerous as twenty years ago and today represent 12% of diagnoses. The causes are multiple, for example genetic factors, but not only. There are also “environmental factors such as pollution or professional factors, in particular asbestos” which causes bronchial cancer, explains Didier Debieuvre, head of the pneumology department at Mulhouse hospital.
“Lung cancer is long sneaky, asymptomatic, for which people have no complaints. When they arrive with symptoms, it is often too late “because the disease is already at an advanced stage”, continues the doctor. These symptoms can be “chest pain, coughing up blood, loss of appetite, weight loss,” he continues.
When this cancer is taken care of at an early stage, with a tumor of less than one centimeter, the chances of survival at 5 years are 90%. Chances that drop to 5% when metastases have already developed.
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