JawaPos.com – Not smoking, avoiding cigarette smoke and air pollution are the right steps to maintain the lungs. Therefore, carcinogens or harmful substances in cigarette smoke and pollution can trigger lung cancer.
In the framework of the Global Lung Cancer Care Month, the Indonesian National Movement for Lung Cancer Care (IPKP) #LUNGTalk, entitled ‘Access to Lung Cancer Treatment: Challenges and Hopes‘, the public is invited to increase awareness and understanding of the current conditions of lung cancer in Indonesia. Then get to know more about the risk factors and symptoms.
Chairperson of the Lung Cancer Working Group of the Indonesian Lung Doctors Association Prof. dr. Elisna Syahruddin, PhD, Sp.P (K), said that cigarette smoke contains various carcinogens and pollutes the air while air also contains a lot of carcinogens. Polluted air is scattered in the environment.
“As a result, people who don’t smoke have the potential to breathe in these carcinogens and can cause various lung diseases, one of which is lung cancer,” he explained.
He explained that the symptoms of lung cancer are difficult to distinguish from the symptoms of various other lung diseases. Especially the airway symptoms because they are not typical. One of them is a cough that takes too long and doesn’t heal.
“It could be with symptoms of a long cough, coughing up blood, shortness of breath, or chest pain,” he explained.
But sometimes it appears with other symptoms, such as weight loss, fever is not too high but does not respond to febrifuge. Because the symptoms are not typical, they are often overlooked so that the cancer is at an advanced stage.
Not only active smokers, secondhand smoke can also get lung cancer. In fact, sometimes lung cancer is secondary lung cancer, namely cancer from other organs that spreads to the lungs.
Usually, cancer that often spreads to the lungs from certain organs such as breast, ovarian, cervical, bone, colon, prostate, and testicular cancer.
According to 2018 GLOBOCAN data, lung cancer in Indonesia ranks first as the deadliest cancer, claiming 26,095 lives from 30,023 diagnosed cases in 2018. This means that no less than 71 people die every day from lung cancer. In fact, over the last five years, lung cancer cases in Indonesia have increased by 10.85 percent, putting Indonesia in a serious zone.
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Editor: Banu Adikara
Reporter: Marieska Harya Virdhani
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