Lung cancer detected after nearly a year of back pain

Hanoi: A 38-year-old pregnant woman had back pain since the third month of pregnancy. After giving birth, she went to the doctor and was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer.

The patient said that initially she had a dull pain in her back, spreading down to her buttocks. Six months later, after giving birth, she had severe pain, difficulty moving, and a dry cough at night.

On June 18, Dr. Pham Cam Phuong, Director of the Center for Nuclear Medicine and Oncology, Bach Mai Hospital, said that the chest CT scan results detected an abnormal mass in the patient's left lung. The biopsy and PET-CT scan results of the left neck lymph nodes confirmed adenocarcinoma with lymph node metastasis, primary in the left lung, with multiple bone metastases.

The doctor diagnosed the patient with stage 4 lung cancer, admitted late, prescribed chemotherapy and anti-bone resorption and pain medication. No one in the patient's family had cancer.

Young people with lung cancer are often diagnosed at a late stage, with a worse prognosis than older patients. According to a study by Bailong Liu et al. in 2019, the rate of lung cancer diagnosis at stage 4 in young people was up to 49% and the 5-year mortality rate was 47%.

Lung cancer ranks first in the number of new cases in men with more than 1.4 million cases, and third in the number of new cases in women with nearly 771,000 cases. Vietnam is also a country with a very high incidence and mortality rate of lung cancer. In 2020, the incidence and mortality rate of lung cancer ranked second in both sexes, with 14% of new cases and 19% of mortality. The disease is common in the elderly, 90% of lung cancer cases are diagnosed after the age of 55, the average age of lung cancer is 70. The incidence and mortality rate in men is twice as high as in women.

In recent years, the pattern of lung cancer in developed countries has been changing due to the control of smoking. As a result, the incidence and mortality rates in elderly men have begun to trend, while the rates in women continue to increase.

Doctors recommend that people with risk factors such as regular tobacco use, family members with lung cancer, work environments exposed to radiation, toxic dust or smoke, or when having suspicious symptoms such as coughing up blood, prolonged cough that does not respond to cough suppressants, should go for screening to detect the disease early.

Minh An

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