An Essay About Lung Cancer

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Lung cancer is one of the most common types of cancers in the world. There are three main types of lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, small cell lung cancer, and lung carcinoid tumor. Just like any other cancer, lung cancer is dangerous, and a life threatening problem. Many studies and researches have been presented to find a cure, but an exact cure has yet to be found. There are however multiple causes, ways to diagnose, and treatments for lung cancer.
When you think of lung cancer, you think of smoking, it is the most common cause of cancer but there are many other causes that people don’t think about. You don’t have to be a smoker to develop lung cancer, secondhand smoke, radon, diesel exhaust, air pollution, and some gene changes cause lung cancer as well. The genes that help a cell grow, divide, or stay alive are called oncogenes. The genes that slow down cell division, or cause calls to die when they are supposed to, are called tumor suppressor genes. Cancer can be caused when these oncogenes turn on, or even when these tumor suppressor genes decide to turn off. Most of the genes that cause lung cancer are developed through your life; inherited genes rarely play a huge factor in lung cancer.
Lung cancer screening tests are recommended only for adults who have no symptoms but may be at high risk for developing lung cancer. There are three things you should ask yourself before being screened for lung cancer, have you smoked in the past 15 years? Were, or are you a heavy smoker? Are you 55-80 years old? There are three risks of doing screening tests. One is that it can be said that someone has lung cancer, when no cancer is present, which may lead to unnecessary tests, and surgeries. This is called false-positive res...

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...ents are diagnosed at a late stage when any curative method of treatment is not possible. Lung cancer is dangerous, it takes more lives per year than breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer combined. It’s harder to treat lung cancer than these other types of cancers. The last additional fact I learned was that every year in the United States about 200,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer, and more than 159,000 die from this disease.
Lung cancer is the most common type of cancer in the world. Although, it is a challenging cancer to treat more ways and treatments are being presented and studied daily. Lung cancer is a deadly disease that presents many problems in a person’s life. There are ways to decrease your chance of developing cancer, but there are too many environmental factors that play a role in cancer to be sure you can positively prevent it.

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