Stop smoking, pulmonology experts urge

Stop smoking and lessen your predisposition to lung cancer. This was the message of pulmonology experts as they revealed that lung cancer is now the number one cancer type in the Philippines. In 2010, the Philippine Cancer Society (PCS) estimated a total of 11,458 new lung cancer cases in both males and females while the estimated number of deaths due to the disease would have been 9,184.

Pulmonologist and chairman on lung malignancy issues of the Philippine College of Chest Physicians (PCCP) Dr. Windfield Tan said smoking has been found as an established cause of lung cancer. A smoker is 8 to 10 times more at risk with lung cancer. A second-hand smoker is also at risk. A cigarette has some 43 to 63 carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals but you will not immediately feel the effect. It will depend upon the length of your consumption and exposure to tobacco.

Tan spoke in a conference organized by the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP) as medical experts mark the National Cancer Consciousness month this January. Some studies suggest that non-smokers who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke, also called second hand smoke, are at an increased risk of lung cancer. Second hand smoke is the smoke that non-smokers are exposed to when they share air space with someone who is smoking. Each year, about 3,000 non-smoking adults die of lung cancer as a result of breathing secondhand smoke. Quitting smoking not only cuts the risk of lung cancer it cuts the risks of many other cancers as well as heart disease, stroke, other lung diseases, and other respiratory illnesses.

Tan warned that lung cancer is not immediately detected. Sometimes, it is already at an advanced stage when it is medically-diagnosed. Symptoms of the disease include a cough that doesn't go away and gets worse over time, constant chest pain, coughing up blood, shortness of breath, wheezing, or hoarseness, repeated problems with pneumonia or bronchitis, swelling of the neck and face, loss of appetite or weight loss, and fatigue.

Source: Klinika Natin