Small cell lung cancer

Small cell lung cancer is the most aggressive form of lung cancer that has been affecting people in the last few years. You might have heard of small cell lung cancer under the name of ‘oat cell lung cancer’. Most frequent this type of cancer occurs in smokers. Cases of non-smokers suffering of small cell lung cancer are extremely rare.

Small cell lung cancer gives symptoms resembling to those given by non-small cell lung cancer (cough, dyspnea, weight loss and fatigue). Diagnosing this type of cancer is made in the same way. Thoracic X-rays, CT scans, bronchoscopy, biopsy are all used for detecting the tumor. Only the histological analysis of the biopsy can tell if the tumor is made of small cells or non-small cells.

While non-small cell lung cancer seems to develop more inside the lungs and less inside other organs, small cell lung cancer likes to spread fast to other organs. A good thing though, is that the small cell lung cancer responds better to chemotherapy and radiotherapy then the non-small cell lung cancer. If no treatment is instituted fast then in 2 to 4 months after diagnose is placed the patient risks to die.

Because of this tendency of spreading to other organs small cell lung cancer can not be treated with surgical techniques as this procedure does not produce long term survival. Chemotherapy is the only method of treatment that increases the survival of the patients suffering of small cell lung cancer.

Studies have concluded that those patients that were diagnosed in an early stage of lung cancer, had good performance status and were female gender had an increased survival rate than other patients. As prognostic factors, the lesions on the central nervous system and the liver affections were considered to be worsening the cases.

As the small cell lung cancer is advancing fast in the body, not many patients survive this disease. Some positive results have been seen in patients who were included in clinical studies that tried to improve the available therapy for this type of cancer. This is why patient entry into clinical trials and studies is quite desirable.

Small cell lung cancer can be prevented. The first thing to do is not start smoking and the second is to quit smoking as soon as possible. Do not play with your life, because cancer might just play a bad joke on you.