Cancer

Some specialists consider throat cancer as a sub-type of oral cancer, while others think it is included in a special category called cancer of the mouth and throat. Whatever the case, this type of cancer is pretty common and it has huge death rates. This happens because the throat is an important part of our body, allowing us to breathe, so to live and it is also exposed to the direct action of the exogen agents that affect the body. These factors that have a bad influence and cause an increased likelyhood of getting cancer are called risk factors. They are determined by examining the statistics of all the patients with throat cancer.



This way specialists found out that almost 70% of the cancer patients are smokers, so this can't be a coincidence. Another important risk factor for this type of cancer is heavy drinking that affects the throat on the inside and makes it more sensitive to infections, then there's the infection with HPV (human papilloma virus, a virus that is better known for causing cervical cancer, as it is transmitted sexually). If this type of cancer is detected in the early stages, when it has just installed in the throat and has not started spreading to the neighbouring areas, it can have a pretty good survival rate, almost 98%.

As the tumor advances in size and location the cancer goes little by little from stage I and II to stages III and IV, the last one being metastatic cancer, that is the cancer cells have spread to distant organs in the patient's body by using the lymphatic system and the blood stream. In these cases, the survival rates go down dramatically , from 90% in stage I, 75% in stage II, 60% in stage III and less than 30% in stage IV.



Unfortunately people only come to the hospital when their disease is pretty advanced, which makes the throat cancer death rate have an incredibly high 45% of the cases. This numbers are among the highest in all cancer types and this gives you some idea of the seriousness of this disease and must be a wake up call for all people, you and me included, to take our health more seriously and go to the doctor immediately when we notice something wrong.

So you should also know the first signs and symptoms of throat cancer, so that you could stay alert and notice them immediately, just in case they appear: a sore throat, a change in the voice, difficulty swallowing, bleeding from the throat, that is a bloody cough, a lump on the outside of the neck, neck pain, brisk voice. Unfortunately these symptoms can also be met in different other diseases that are lot less serious and they are usually attributed to flu. So the patient ignores the first signs and only goes to the doctor when the symptoms get serious, I mean they can see blood in the handkerchief or have a serious pain.




That is the sign that throat cancer is already very advanced, as the cancer has caused a rupture in the throat tissue and that is the cause of the bleeding. When it comes to this, the cancer is already metastatic, so this totally explains the high throat cancer death rate. You might consider visiting the following web sites for further information about this type of cancer: www.oralcancerfoundation.org, www.wikipedia.org, www.ehow.com and www.rdoc.org.uk.