Lao Wu was a widowed old man, 68 years old, unmarried, childless, and his nephew brought him to the outpatient clinic. After entering the door, he kept communicating with his hands, and I thought he was a deaf mute who couldn't speak, but he wasn't! He pulled down his collar, a large hole in his neck, straight through the trachea. The outside is wrapped in a casing. His nephew said that the old man had surgery for throat cancer three years ago.
"So what's going on this time?" I asked.
"Coughing, there was blood in the phlegm, it was almost half a month, and it would vomit when eating, as if the esophagus was blocked," his nephew replied.
Roughly understanding the situation, let the old man do chest CT, found that there is a 3.6cm lump in the lower left lung near the lung gate. Moreover, the walls of the middle section of the esophagus are significantly thickened.
The patient was later admitted to the hospital for further examination, gastroscopy and pathology suggesting esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and lung puncture biopsy suggesting squamous cell carcinoma. Immunohistochemistry confirms that lung lesions are primary. So far, this old man has suffered from three malignant tumors of laryngeal cancer, lung cancer and esophageal cancer. All three cancers have a common cause: heavy smoking. The old man began smoking at the age of 17, two packs a day, and did not quit smoking until before he had surgery on throat cancer. Calculate that the smoking index has exceeded 1000, which is a heavy smoker.
The harm of cigarettes has been said countless times before, and those who can hear it will naturally wake up, and those who can't listen to it are still letting go of themselves. There are more than 4,000 kinds of harmful substances and 69 kinds of carcinogens in cigarettes, and it can be said that many diseases from head to toe are related to smoking. For example, cerebral stroke, carotid artery thrombosis, lung cancer, COPD, coronary heart disease, stomach ulcer, infertility, lower extremity arterial thrombosis and so on. There are also systemic diseases, hypertension, diabetes, and smoking will aggravate the occurrence of complications.
What malignancies can be caused by smoking?
According to the World Health Organization, tobacco kills nearly 6 million people each year, many of them because of cancer. A UK study showed that among the 13 cancers listed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as susceptible to smoking, 11 cancers (lung, stomach, esophageal, pancreatic, bladder, kidney, myelogenous leukemia, liver cancer, oral, laryngeal, oropharyngeal and hypopharyngeal cancers) had mortality rates significantly associated with smoking; mortality from the other 2 cancers (nasopharyngeal, nasal and sinus cancers) may also be associated with smoking, as the number of deaths due to these 2 cancers is small, but the evidence shows that it is positively associated with smoking.
In various types of lung cancer, the occurrence of lung squamous cell carcinoma and small cell lung cancer is closely related to smoking, some lung adenocarcinoma patients are also heavy smokers, this part of the lung adenocarcinoma patients have a characteristic: the proportion of sensitive gene mutations in genetic testing is very small, more is more difficult KRAS mutations, resulting in targeted therapy effect is very poor, some patients immunotherapy effect is not satisfactory. The result is poor treatment and short survival.
Quitting smoking is not too late, smoking more cigarettes will give the body more poison, for people who quit smoking, the incidence of lung cancer after more than 15 years of smoking cessation has dropped to the same as others. If you don't want to get old and sick, quit smoking as soon as possible, stay away from cigarettes, and give health more protection, after all, we live in the environment there are already too many factors that are harmful to health.