Chapter 4263【352】Is it early or not?
In the conference room, doctors from the two hospitals were having intense discussions and negotiations.
Lung cancer is prone to brain metastasis.
Patients with brain metastases from lung cancer are often seen in the thoracic surgery departments of Guozhi and Guoxian.
Like Dr. Liang, if brain metastasis is confirmed, lung cancer cases are not impossible, but very rare.
Generally, this kind of patient is in an advanced stage, which is caused by the patient's own factors and delays in going to the hospital for examination. It should be distinguished from the situation of Dr. Liang.
The reason why lung cancer is prone to brain metastasis is generally attributed to two points.
First, cancer requires pathological classification, so pathologists were present at the event.
The type of lung cancer most likely to develop brain metastasis is highly malignant small cell carcinoma.
Second, due to the anatomical connection between the lungs and the brain itself, even those with low malignancy are destined to have brain metastasis more easily than cancer cells in other places.
To be more specific, the blood vessels of the lungs and the vertebral veins supplying the brain have abundant anastomotic branches, and these anastomotic branches do not need to communicate with the pulmonary capillaries.
As mentioned earlier, the pulmonary circulation exchanges substances through the pulmonary capillaries, converting venous blood into arterial blood, entering the heart and pumping it throughout the body.
However, due to the presence of these anastomotic branches that do not pass through the pulmonary capillaries, the cancer cells in the pulmonary blood vessels do not need to be filtered by the pulmonary capillaries. When falling, they can directly enter the brain through the anastomotic branches and cause brain metastasis.
It is impossible for doctors to cut off these anastomotic branches. There are tens of thousands of blood vessels and it is impossible to cut them all.
The cerebrovascular barrier will make it difficult for chemotherapy drugs to pass through, making lung cancer brain metastases as difficult to treat as brain metastases from other cancers.
From the above theory, we can draw a basic consensus that is widely shared among clinical and lay people: this patient is basically finished.
Perhaps Dean Liang is looking for Mr. Zhang in the ward to discuss work matters?
Well, the doctors guessed it again.
This time Dr. Song is relatively optimistic.
“It was discovered very early.” Dr. Song Xuelin looked at Dr. Xie when he said this.
It’s Dr. Xie who is great for discovering the patient’s problem so early. The first key to treating cancer is to treat it as early as possible.
Speaking of the question of whether it should be treated early or not, many people immediately think of cancer metastasis, saying that cancer patients’ lives are shortened by cancer metastasis.
First of all, we need to know what cancer metastasis is. A more accurate term should be called metastatic cancer.
Cancer cells are always present in the human body. Healthy people limit their survival time, preventing them from proliferating and gathering to become tumors, which ultimately affects human life.
Dr. Song Xuelin’s judgment on this is: “Dr. Xie may have discovered the cancer cells shed into the patient’s brain for the first time, but no brain tumor formed.”
So whether it is Dr. Xie or Dr. Qin, they think the patient’s brain CT scan is ambiguous.
Based on the above judgment, the patient should choose neurosurgery to find out if any cancer cells have fallen off to the brain as much as possible. If so, remove them when they first start to gather and proliferate, so as to achieve the same therapeutic effect as the original cancer.
The reason why Dr. Song holds such a view is that the primary tumor of the patient's lung cancer is obviously isolated and small, which means that the disease was discovered very early.
This has to be admired by Dr. Xie for his extremely high vigilance, which was enough to save the patient's life.
Other doctors present nodded.
How early cancer is detected can be classified into cancer staging medically.
Dr. Xie Wanying then mentioned by name: "We need to do pathological staging of cancer."
“Oh.” Dr. He Xiangyu rounded his lips, feeling that the junior sister was the pathology teacher again.
“What is the pathological stage of cancer?” Some doctors asked.
In the past, cancer staging was centered around surgery, which resulted in pathology not determining the cancer staging but only characterizing the cancer.
Thank you for your support, good night, dear friends~
(End of this chapter)
