Articles

When people think about lung cancer, symptoms such as cough, breathlessness, or chest discomfort usually come to mind.

This is usually not an abstract question. People ask it because something has just happened: A scan. A biopsy. A sentence that included the words “small cell”.

Back pain is one of the most common reasons people see a GP. Most of the time, it is muscular, postural, or due to wear and tear. It’s most often something annoying rather than something sinister.

Prevention is a word that gets used a lot in medicine, and it carries some baggage.

When someone is diagnosed with lung cancer, one of the first concerns is often how quickly the disease may progress. The answer is not always straightforward.

When lung cancer is suspected, the question most people ask is fairly direct.
What tests confirm it?

Radiotherapy has been part of lung cancer treatment for a long time. For most of that time, the challenge has been the same. How do you deliver enough radiation to destroy a tumour without causing too much damage to the healthy tissue around it?

Lung cancer remains one of the most common cancers in the UK, with around 48,000 new diagnoses each year. It is also one of the leading causes of cancer-related death.

If you have had pneumonia, or you have been told you might have it, it can be unsettling. The symptoms are unpleasant, the fatigue can linger, and Google is not exactly known for its calming bedside manner!

For most people, a lung cancer diagnosis feels like a whirlwind.

When someone hears “lung cancer”, it sounds like one single thing. One diagnosis. One path.

Looking at cancer statistics isn’t exactly light reading. Nobody wakes up on a Tuesday morning wanting to dive into mortality rates. But we need to talk about it.