Rwanda: more awareness needed to fight lung cancer

Rwanda joined with the rest of the world to mark World Lung Cancer Day, which is celebrated on August 1 every year.

The day aims to raise awareness and awareness of lung cancer with the main aim of raising awareness of its causes.

Lung cancer is responsible for nearly 1 in 5 cancer deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

While lung cancer and breast cancer are diagnosed at the same rate (11.6%), lung cancer kills more people each year than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined.

Lung cancer mortality is expected to reach 2.45 million by 2030, an increase of 39% in just over a decade.

A report by the Global Cancer Observatory (GCO) of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) shows that in 2020, lung cancer was ranked 7th in Rwanda with 346 new cases, which represents 3, 9% of all cancer cases.

The death toll was 313, representing 5.2% of all cancer death cases in Rwanda. The report was released in March of this year.

While most people understand that smoking is the primary risk factor for lung cancer in 80% of all cases, other less well-known risk factors include the environment and genetics.

According to the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), environmental exposure to radon, asbestos, arsenic, beryllium and uranium has been linked to lung cancer.

The risk of lung cancer also increases with a history of cancer in another part of the body, with age, with a family history, with irradiation of the chest and with lung diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). .

A new prospective study of more than 500 adults who currently smoked at the time of lung cancer diagnosis, published July 27 in Annals of Internal Medicine, an academic medical journal of the American College of Physicians, provides strong evidence that Quitting smoking after a diagnosis of lung cancer is associated with a significant improvement in overall survival and disease-free survival in these patients.

The report is based on a 15-year collaborative study between the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the NN Blokhin National Center for Medical Research in Oncology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

This study recruited 517 patients with newly diagnosed non-small cell lung cancer who were current smokers, from thoracic surgery wards at two sites in Moscow, Russian Federation, and followed them annually for an average 7-year-olds to record any change in their smoking behavior and state of health.

“About 42% of the patients (220 participants) in this study quit smoking during the follow-up period. Most of these patients quit smoking within the first 3 months after diagnosis and remained non-smokers until after. end of monitoring time, ”said Dr Mahdi Sheikh, scientist in the Genomic Epidemiology Branch at IARC and lead author of the study in a press release posted on the IARC website.

“Patients who quit smoking lived an average of 22 months longer overall and without recurrence of their disease than those who continued to smoke.”

Dr Sheikh added; “After taking into account the differences in when patients quit smoking, the characteristics of the tumor and the treatments received, we found that patients who quit smoking were 33% less likely to die from any cause. either and 30% less risk of disease progression. disease.”

Some of the common symptoms of lung cancer according to cancer.org include a cough that doesn’t go away or gets worse, coughing up blood, chest pain (often made worse by deep breathing, coughing or laughing), hoarseness, loss of appetite, unexplained weight loss, shortness of breath, and infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia that do not go away or keep coming back.

If you have any of these symptoms, it is advisable to see a doctor as soon as possible.

Some of the easiest ways to maintain good lung health are to not smoke, avoid second-hand smoke, and exercise regularly.