Squamous cell carcinoma is considered one of the most common forms of lung cancer. To treat this disease you need as intensively as any form of cancer. Knowing the characteristics of squamous cell lung cancer, you can not only detect the disease in time, but also prevent its appearance. On the characteristics of the disease and talk in the article below.
What is squamous cell lung cancer?
This disease develops from flat cells of the epithelium lining the bronchi. People who are well acquainted with anatomy will immediately object, saying that there are no flat cells in the tissues of the bronchi, and they will be right. That is why smoking is a habit dangerous for health: with particles and smoke, particles of dirt get into the bronchi, because of the large number of which the structure of the epithelium subsequently changes, flat cells appear. And accordingly, there are favorable conditions for the development of squamous cell lung cancer.
There are several kinds of this disease, and they look like this:
- Horny cancer is a form in which so-called pearls appear in the epithelium.
- Squamous nonkeratinized lung cancer is characterized by the appearance of mitosis.
- Low-grade cancer is dangerous for a large number of mitoses.
Squamous cell carcinoma can be central or peripheral. With peripheral cancer pain is absent, because of which it is not easy to determine the disease. With squamous central lung cancer, the patency of the bronchi is impaired. When the tumor increases, pain appears.
Symptoms and treatment of squamous cell lung cancer
Squamous cell carcinoma develops slowly enough that, therefore, attention is paid to the disease only when there is a marked manifestation of symptoms:
- prolonged cough;
- a sharp decrease in weight;
- weakness;
- wheezing or wheezing;
- the appearance of blood in the expectorant mucus.
In the treatment of squamous cell lung cancer, radiation or chemotherapy is used , necessarily surgical intervention. The latter method is used in most cases, chemotherapy is prescribed, when the operation is contraindicated for some reason.
Forecasts for squamous cell lung cancer depend on the stage of the disease and the treatment prescribed. With the early detection of cancer, 80% of patients can be cured, but if the cancer is detected only in the third stage, then one must understand that the chances of coping with the disease will be substantially less.