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Thomas D'amico: Most patients that have small tumors present with no symptoms. In Bambi's case, she had a three centimeter tumor and most patients like her are asymptomatic or really with no complaint.
Thomas D'amico, MD
Duke University Medical Center
Thomas D'amico: The most common symptoms present when tumors are larger. Large tumors can invade the ribs and cause pain. They can invade the blood vessels and cause coughing up a blood or they can be around the airway and cause a dry cough.
Most patients that present with symptoms have tumors that are extensive stage, beyond our ability to cure them. Patients with smaller tumors usually don’t have symptoms and frequently, we catch those because the patient comes to medical attention for other reasons; in a chest X-ray or a CAT Scan demonstrates a small nodule that will be later find out to be lung cancer.
Some patients are candidates for an operation that is called thoracoscopic lobectomy which is a minimally invasive approach to the removal of one lobe of the lung.
Fortunately, in Bambi's case, she was a candidate for this. We performed the thoracoscopic lobectomy which involves just two small incisions, the larger being about two and half inches. The procedure is done with a help of a video system, so a camera is placed into the chest cavity and the lobe of the lung is removed using a minimally invasive technique.
Screening Criteria
Thomas D'amico: What I recommend for patients with known risk factors and those would be age greater than 60; extensive, previous exposure to tobacco or a family history. What I recommend for those people is to go to their family physician and discuss the potential benefits of screening any patient with lung cancer and to make sure that they're getting the opinion of more than just one person before proceeding with care.
Not every single practitioner has seen everything that can be done and sometimes that means going to a different hospital where techniques are more advanced or there are more practitioners to help decide about care.
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