Symptoms of Lung Cancer in Young Women

… Continued …

1. Feeling of breathless (shortness of breath).
2. Pain in the chest, it usually occurs or worsens when you take a breath (especially for a deep breath).
3. Persistent cough, not easy to improve – particularly if you cough up mucus, too!
4. Change in appetite. Appetite loss is common in people with lung cancer, and this may cause weight loss.
5. Lethargy, lack of energy, weakness, or tiredness.

See more about early signs and advanced symptoms of lung cancer in this post!

Physical examination is a part of procedures to diagnose lung cancer. But examining the symptoms are not enough.

Several tests are usually required to make the diagnosis. If you experience some of the symptoms mentioned above, it’s much better to seek help promptly.

Bronchioloalveolar cancer

BAC (bronchioloalveolar cancer) is a kind of adenocarcinoma, which is quite common to be found in young women. It can occur in patients who smoked or never smoked.

But it seems that this type is likely to occur in non-smokers. Mucinous BAC is more common in non smokers. And non-mucinous BAC is usually found in smokers.

With a few exceptions, BAC is also diagnosed with the similar ways in diagnosing other lung cancers. Interestingly, it is often mistakenly diagnosed for pneumonia or other lung diseases.

What else?

For summary, the following are other important points about lung cancer in young women you need to remember:

1. It is often diagnosed too late. Young women, ‘especially those who look healthy and not-smokers’, are not usually closely monitored on a doctor’s radar screen. This can cause a delay in diagnosis. Furthermore, the disease is also less likely to cause early symptoms.
2. In most cases, the type of lung cancer in young adults (both in young men and women) is adenocarcinoma.
3. Genetic predisposition is likely to play a large role. In fact, many young women with this cancer have a family history of the same condition. However, exposure to tobacco smoking (either through active smoking or passive smoking) is still an important risk factor.
4. Interestingly, the number of young women with lung cancer who never smoked is also quite high. Even according to statistics, young adult patients with this cancer tend to be never smoked than other patients who develop the disease later in life.
5. But again the exact cause of why and how young adults get the disease is not fully understood yet.