The diagnosis of cancer confronts many patients with the question of life and survival. The question “how long do I have left?” burns very quickly under the nails of most of those affected, since the diagnosis “cancer” is still associated with certain death.
However, nowadays only a few types of cancer mean certain non-survival. The diagnosis tumor means first of all a new tissue formation. This can be benign or malignant and in principle any type of cell in the human body can degenerate.
Benign tumors are not counted as cancer. What is colloquially called “cancer” are the malignant tumors. Carcinomas are tumors that originate from the uppermost cell layer of a tissue.
Lung cancer is still a very serious tumor disease today. 25% of all diagnosed tumors are found in the lung. In men, lung cancer is the most common cause of death and the prognosis is generally considered poor.
After 15 years, 15% of patients diagnosed with lung cancer are still alive. Although all this sounds very harsh, the prognosis for lung cancer cannot be expressed simply as a number. There are many factors that play a role in the likelihood of survival and make it impossible to make accurate predictions for every patient.
For this very reason, patients should not be discouraged by numbers, as these are usually average values and cannot be directly applied to their own individual course. By far the most important factor in increasing the probability of survival is early detection and disease prevention. The most important measure to prevent lung cancer is not to smoke, as 85% of lung cancer cases are due to smoking.
In early detection it is important to recognise the warning signs (e.g. coughing for several weeks, sudden worsening of smoker’s cough or unintentional weight loss etc.) and to consult a doctor early on to clarify these possible signs. If lung cancer is diagnosed, the following points can be used to derive approximate estimates of the probability of survival.
The lung is made up of different types of cells, each of which has its own function and which together form the functional lung. A tumor can develop from each of these cell types. There are 4 types of tumors in the lung: These individual types are grouped into two groups, which are used as standard in hospitals for classification.
A distinction is made between small-cell bronchial carcinomas (oat cell carcinomas; 15% of all cases) and non-small-cell bronchial carcinomas (85% of all cases). This group includes glandular cell carcinomas, oat cell carcinomas and large cell carcinomas (also called large cell carcinomas). The survival rate is generally higher for non-small-cell tumors than for small-cell tumors.
- Glandular cell tumors (= adenocarcinomas)
- Cover cell tumors (= squamous cell carcinoma; squamous cell is the uppermost lining cell layer)
- Oat cell tumors (originating from hormone releasing cells) and
- Large cell carcinomas. The latter cannot be assigned to a specific cell type as the origin of the tumor.
