Cancer in China influenced by pollution, poverty(2)

LUNG CANCER

Chinese patients tend to have more severe adhesion and calcification at pulmonary hilar lymph node, when compared to Europeans and Americans, according to Wang Jun, chest surgery expert with the Peking University People's Hospital.

In Health News, he attributed such characteristics to air pollution, living conditions and diet, among other factors.

Abnormal hyperplasia at pulmonary hilar lymph node means higher risks during surgeries, Wang said. As the blood vessels at the pulmonary hilar region have extremely thin walls, separating the adhesive hyperplasia could lead to massive, life-threatening bleeding in the chest.

COLORECTAL CANCER

In China, the age of colorectal cancer incidence is ten years earlier than that in western countries. While the west reports more cancer of the colon than rectal, it is opposite in China, Gu Jin, colorectal surgery expert with Beijing Cancer Hospital, said in Health News.

Gu said there had been no convincing explanation yet due to a lack of large-scale epidemiological surveys.

However, he said poor medical insurance contributed to Chinese doctors searching for flexible ways of treating rectal cancer.

The internationally recommended therapy for rectal cancer is a 25-day radiochemotherapy prior to surgery with a six-to-eight-day break in between. However, cash-strapped and poorly-insured Chinese patients find the therapy lengthy and costly, Gu said.

As a result, doctors came up with a new treatment scheme, ten-day radiochemotherapy followed by a two-week break before surgery, which proved to work well too, Gu said.

According to the "national report on tumor registration 2012", it estimated that there are 3.12 million new cases of cancer each year in China. There are 2.7 million cancer-caused deaths, which represents 13 percent of total deaths of Chinese people.