“Traditional or alternative medicine?”
1. – Research
1- What are the characteristics of this illness or upheaval?
The characteristics of lung cancer are divided in two, the small harmful cells and the medium harmful cells. Lung cancer is a harmful cell in the lungs while others come (metastasize) from different parts of the body. The most common way to have the lung cancer is that in de Lung start growing harmful cells in a not very small size does not usually grows and spreads slowly to other organs. Lung cancer of small harmful cell, called oat cell, is not very common than lung cancer of medium harmful cells, grows faster and is more likely to spread other organs in the body. The Lung cancer of small harmful cells can grow faster and if is not detected early the harmful cells can transfer to other organs and the 80% of people that have lung cancer with small harmful cells dies early than people with medium harmful cells. A special characteristic of this lung cancer with small harmful cells is easier to found in the lung, because it grows faster and is more visible to see.
2- Why does it occur?
Lung cancer is produced if the person smokes. If the person smoke and longer person smoke, the greater your risk of lung cancer. Lung cancer is a disease of uncontrolled danger cell growth in the lung. And if is not detected earlier the cell became bigger in a very short time. Smokers people has a 85% of probability to be with lung cancer, and the non smokers has a 15% of probability to be with lung cancer, but the people that don`t smoke they can have lung cancer by passive smoking, Radon gas, asbestos, heredity and air pollution.
3- What are the most common symptoms?
The most common symptoms in people who has lung cancer are persistent cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, wheezing, chest pain, coughing up blood, recurring pneumonia or bronchitis, appetite and weight loss, hoarse voice and facial and neck swelling. The first symptoms that someone feels are fatigue, chest pain and persistent cough.
4- What types of treatment or therapy can a patient use? How long do they take? What are their pros and cons?
The therapies or the treatment that the patient could use are: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and palliative care. How long these treatments take? Well actually the question has to be, how long will this person live? The duration of the treatment depends on when the tumour is founded and how big or dangerous this tumour is, the treatment could take 1 year to 5 years, or probably the entire life of this person until this person dead. The contras when finishing any of these therapies will be: fatigue, several lost of weight, psychological problems, problems in mouth and teeth’s, problems with the family, you could probably lose friends, you can`t eat delicious food like Mc Donald’s or food with a big quantity of lipids, the one that is most eat in the United States. The pros will be that the person affected wont smoke anymore, and that the person affected will have more probabilities of “surviving”.
5- What are the real possibilities of a recovery if using this type of medicine?
It depends on how the tumour is classified, it can be malignant, here we have problems, or it can be benign, like it name says with this type of tumour there are more probabilities of finish alive. Also it depends if this person smokes or not and also the age of this person. If this person doesn’t smoke and also it is young (15-30 years) the recovery probably will be satisfactory. But if this person smokes and it has a malignant tumour, the probabilities of a long life are the minimum.
6- What type of remedies can a patient take?
Actually there are a lot of pills and medicaments that are part of the treatment, such as anaesthetics or medicament that let you breathe better. But there is a new advanced medicament that increases in a 25 per cent the probabilities of surviving, the medicament is called “bevacizumab” but the commercial name is “Avastin” it was presented in Buenos Aires, Argentina in “Roche” Laboratories. This medicament improves the life quality of the patient and, in a difference of others it inhibits the growth of blood vessels within tumours.
7- What are the costs involved?
The costs in the lung cancer are separated by 3 phases, staging phase, Initial phase and month of surgery. First phase can cost as much as USD 13.000, Second phase can cost USD8.000 and the third phase typically reach at least 26.000. After this 3 phases and 9 months of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and the initial surgery the total comes to about USD90.000, after these 9 months the patient has a very poor prognosis and the doctors start asking how long the patient survives.
8- Do health programs in Chile cover this treatment expenses? How about health programs of the USA, UK, New Zealand, Australia or any European country? (You can refer to only one)
In Chile the “National Cancer Program” does not cover all the costs involved, radiotherapy in some cases and the palliative care, people have to pay the treatment on their own. In other countries as USA you can find many programs about the cancer treatment, this country do not cover 100% the treatment, but they have conventions with big companies, medical centres and the government to help the patient with resources, with this resources the patient can have the treatment the need and after they are healthy again, they can start paying again to this companies or medical centre all the resources used in the treatment. In the USA the “National Cancer Institute” in charge of give the information and the support for this entire people. The prevention and the early detection of the cancer have a bigger chance of successful treatment; out of all the years of studios cancer remains a disease very spacious with high mortality rate.
9-Refer to one real testimony to support your findings. Include as much information as possible.
“I was smoker and I had a cancer family report, one day, the medical centre give a caner advertisements and I decide to make a scanner, after a week they call me because they find a small nodule. The blood test was positive, so I felt destroyed because I have a family with a lot of cancer reports. After the surgery, there wasn’t with samples taken every three months, now, I can have a quiet life and no worries”
