November is National Lung Cancer Month and health professionals are encouraging everyone to not underestimate the disease.
For all Americans lung cancer is a formidable adversary, killing more people than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS) it is the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women, and over 100,000 Americans are diagnosed with it each year.
A recent report by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) indicated that lung cancer is the second most common cancerous illness among African-Americans (after prostate cancer for men and breast cancer for women), Blacks usually develop the disease at a younger age than whites, Blacks are less likely to get early treatment and Black men ages 40-54 are two to four times more likely to develop lung cancer than white men.
“I don’t think this is common knowledge,” said John Stewart, M.D., a research associate with the NCI.
Studies have shown that while African-Americans have similar rates of smoking as whites and lower exposure to tobacco smoke, they are more likely to develop and die from the disease as a result of tobacco use.
Some researchers are also looking at differences in two African Americans metabolize nicotine from cigarettes, one of the primary causes of lung cancer.
“There could be genetic factors on how African-Americans metabolize tobacco smoke,” noted Neil Risch, director of the Institute for Human Genetics at the University of California-San Francisco.
Since the late 1950s heavy and longtime use of cigarettes has been recognized as the top cause of lung cancer. According to the American Lung Association cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, most of which have been proven to cause cancer.
A person who smokes more than one pack of cigarettes per day has a risk of developing lung cancer more than someone who has never smoked. However, once someone quits smoking their risk for cancer decreases and after 15 years the risk goes back to the level of someone who has never smoked.
Medical effects from second-hand smoke are leading to increased health care and business costs for people in many cities, including Indianapolis, where officials say the smoking rate is higher than the national average (28 percent vs. 23 percent).
“The cost of health care and the premature loss of life attributed to secondhand smoke in Marion County is too high,” said Virginia Caine, M.D., director of the Marion County Health Department. “We must do all we can to combat this public health threat.”
Caine has proposed several solutions for reducing the impact of smoking, including strict enforcement of no smoking restriction in public areas, developing voluntary strategies to eliminate smoking in places of business, and more community support for smoke cessation programs.
Stewart believes another important goal is to ensure that patients, particularly those who are African-American, are aware of all of their treatment options.
“Patients need to have all of their options explained to them,” he said. “If they are told they have early-stage lung cancer, they need to be aggressive in seeking surgery. But the bottom-line is that everyone should stop smoking.”
General symptoms
• Persistent cough
• Being short of breath
• Coughing up phlegm and blood
• Pain when breathing or coughing
• Loss of appetite
• Fatigue
• Sudden weight loss
• Increasingly hoarse voice
• Shortness of breath
General treatments
• Resection (partial or complete removal of cancerous lung).
• Radiation therapy (destruction of cancer cells).
• Chemotherapy (isolation of cancer cells).
• Clinical trials testing new cancer drugs.
