There are few early symptoms for bronchial carcinoma (lung cancer)!The following symptoms and complaints may indicate bronchial carcinoma:
- Change in cough quality (> 60%): irritable cough.
- Fatigue, performance kink (> 50 %).
- Weight loss (about 45%)
- Dyspnea (shortness of breath; about 35%).
- Giemen – whistling breath sounds.
- Sputum (sputum) / hemoptysis (hemoptysis; about 30%).
- Fever (about 20%)
- Night sweats (night sweats)
- Pneumonia (pneumonia; about 20%).
- Thoracic pain (chest wall pain / chest pain; about 15%).
- Seizures, zebral seizures (about 15%).
- Drumstick finger (about 7%).
- In advanced bronchial carcinoma/tumor growth possibly:
- Hoarseness (dysphonia; approximately 10%; due to compression and infiltration of the recurrent laryngeal nerve),
- Ipsilateral (“on the same side”) diaphragmatic elevation in phrenic affection.
- Dysphagia (dysphagia)
- Hypotension (low blood pressure) in pericardial effusion (pericardial effusion).
- Shoulder-arm syndrome (about 7%).
- Upper influence congestion (OES) in stenosis (“narrowing”) of the inferior vena cava (approx. 5%)
- Bone pain in skeletal metastases (daughter tumors in the skeletal system).
- Neurological symptoms in brain metastases
If the cough persists for more than three weeks and does not respond to attempts at therapy, the suspicion of bronchial carcinoma should be checked!
In small cell bronchial carcinoma can also be a so-called paraneoplastic syndrome in the foreground. These are metabolic symptoms that occur in direct relation to a tumor condition but are not directly caused by the tumor or its metastases:
- Hypercalcemia (calcium excess) (tumor hypercalcemia; tumor-related elevated blood calcium level) and hyperphosphatemia (phosphate excess) due to ectopic production (production of a hormone at an unusual site) of a parathyroid hormone-related peptide (PTHrP; parathyroid hormone-related protein).
- Hypercortisolism (Cushing’s syndrome) due to ectopic ACTH production.
- Dermatomyositis or polymyositis (inflammatory, rheumatic diseases, which are counted among the so-called collagenoses).
- Lambert-Eaton syndrome: autoimmune disease of the peripheral nervous system with great similarity to myasthenia gravis; proximally emphasized myopathy (muscle disease) due to antibodies against the presynaptic calcium channels.
- Pierre-Marie-Bamberger syndrome: hypertrophic osteoarthropathy associated with painful swelling, especially in the diaphyses of the long tubular bones, as well as drumstick-like widening of the fingers and toes and clock glass nails
- Syndrome of inadequate ADH secretion (SIADH) (Synonym: Schwartz-Bartter syndrome) – there is an inappropriately high secretion of antidiuretic hormone (ADH; ADH excess) in relation to blood plasma osmolality; this leads to too little fluid excretion by the kidneys with the formation of a highly concentrated urine; the result is hyperhydration (overhydration) with dilutional hyponatremia (“dilutional sodium deficiency”), which can lead to cerebral edema (brain swelling). Etiology (causes): paraneoplastic in approximately 80% of cases in patients with small cell lung cancer; other possible causes include: Cerebral hemorrhage, brain tumor, meningitis (meningitis, encephalitis (brain inflammation), Legionella pneumonia (pneumonia caused by the pathogen Legionella pneumophilia), tuberculosis, carcinoma (diagnosis of exclusion)Symptoms: Nausea (nausea), anorexia (loss of appetite), cephalgia (headache).
- Thrombophilia (tendency to thrombosis).
