Throat cancer is one of the types of cancer that affect all kinds of people, regardless of the race, age, weight, height and social status. This means that anyone can be diagnosed with cancer in the throat. This can be really dangerous, since cancer generally is a very critical and serious disease.
If this happens to you, there are a few things that you could miss or won’t enjoy, especially in eating and drinking just about anything you desire. Now, that’s like being jailed where you do not have any choice. This is not to make you feel scared or disappointed, but to let you see the bigger picture of what throat cancer can really do for you. Speaking which, here are some important details about this cancer that you need to be aware of.
The Signs and Symptoms
Symptoms of throat cancer are not specific or distinctive, which means they can be also signs of other harmful disease and cancers. But when you have the following symptoms that happen to occur more frequently, they can indicate throat cancer:
1. hoarse voice
2. a lump at the back of the throat
3. having itchy and sore throat
4. non-stop and extreme coughing
5. difficulty to swallow
6. hard to breath
The Causes and Risk Factors
What causes throat cancer in men, women and also children? Doctors cannot actually give specific causes that make the throat have cancerous cells, but there are proven factors that risk the disease. These are nicotine, which is commonly found in cigarettes and tobaccos, and harmful bacteria growth. During the development of cancer in the throat, the cells continually grow, live and spread. They have the ability to multiply and affect the normal or healthy cells to become dead and replaced by cancerous ones.
The Treatments
Methods to cure throat cancer differ depending on the particular location and stage of the cancer. They also vary based on the health and personal preferences of the individual. That being said, you need to discuss with the doctor about how you can be treated with this cancer in case you are positive to have it.
1. Radiation
This treatment requires high-energy beams like X-rays. It enables a doctor to conduct treatment to remove tumor. The radioactive seeds and wires will be inserted inside the body, near the tumor, of the patient. This is the only way to treat early stage of throat cancer.
2. Surgery
For this method, it would depend on what stage and where the location of the cancer is. Doctors have to assess first and conduct the necessary treatment.
3. Chemotherapy
The physician uses chemicals to kill the cancerous cells. This is usually very common to treat cancer to avoid spreading and growth. It has very obvious side effect though, which is t
4. Targeted Drug Therapy
For this treatment, doctors suggest you to take Cetuximab, a type of drug therapy, which is made to treat throat cancer. There are other medications to treat cancer but no patient must get anything without the prescription of a doctor.
If one of these types of treatments is suggested to you by the doctor, you should continue undergoing it, unless the session is over and has been approved. In most cases, two or more treatments are recommended for better, more effective and quicker result. Somehow, curing throat cancer is not a 50-50 chance, as long as the stage is not yet at its critical point. That means always have a hope to survive from this kind of cancer.