The manager of the “Marius Nasta” Institute of Pneumophthisiology in Bucharest, Dr. Beatrice Mahler, drew attention to the fact that those who smoke at least one pack of cigarettes a day, for about 20 years, should have a CT scan ) to the chest. She also emphasized that screening programs should not be neglected, notes News.ro.
Pulmonary tomographyPhoto: Vladimir Gerdo / TASS / Profimedia
“At Marius Nasta, there are many patients who arrive with lung cancer or with lung metastases of a cancer that is, in fact, a distant cancer and which the respective patient did not know about and the metastases are detected, then we look for the primary source. It is an extremely serious phenomenon, this late detection of cancer and if we are talking about lung cancer, things are quite complex, because the lung has no pain receptor and practically anything that grows in the lung, beyond the symptoms attributed to smoking, that is, a cough that can be irritating at most or can be absent at all, the person in question has no symptoms”, said Beatrice Mahler, on Medika TV, answering a question about lung cancer, after the Covid-19 pandemic wave.
Mahler said people who have smoked for more than 20 years should see a doctor for tests.
“It’s extremely important that we direct our searches or search direction to screening programs, to make them understand that anyone who smokes for more than 20 years, a pack of cigarettes a day, needs to over 20 years and especially if he is more than 55 years old, to have a CT chest exam. Depending on the result, the behavior is varied. The examinations are repeated over a long period of time, but there is a condition imposed by the states that support such screening programs through health programs, namely the abandonment of smoking”, Mahler also declared.
The manager at “Marius Nasta” explained that, in addition to the counseling programs, you also need the will to quit smoking.
“You must at least want to quit smoking, you must at least go to a program that advises you in order to give up this habit, and once these steps are taken, there is a good chance that you will detect the people in good time. When we talk about such screening programs, I don’t think we need to talk about the cost-effectiveness or short-term relationship, we should think about long-term cost-effectiveness programs because the emotional trauma, which cannot be quantified in money, the cost of oncological treatment, radiotherapy, surgical treatment, psychological counseling, not only for patients, but also for the family, accumulated and calculated in years means much more money than a CT done on a part of the population that uses this type usually”, said Beatrice Mahler.
