Dr Joseph Kamugisha Smoking used to be an old habit amongst our elderly people and many passed on without lung cancer notifications. As time passes, the smoking behaviour seems to be reducing in our society though the rate is still high in rural areas. Smoking is perceived by many locals as a mode to improve internal temperature. This is a wrong life time decision and life threatening. Toxins in tobacco are very harmful to the body and recent studies in lung cancer point at the strong aggression from the tobacco smoke to destroy the lung parenchyma in the shortest period of time. Increasing numbers of people suffering from lung cancer show there is need for more concerted efforts on improved levels of smoking cessation. Lung cancer can be caused by other agents and people can suffer from various types of the disease. Lung cancer disease is divided into various types. The small cell lung cancer divided into limited and extensive disease form. The non-small cell lung cancer disease can be divided into squamous and adenocarcinoma diseases. Other rare forms of the disease include typical and atypical carcinoids as well as large cell neuro-endocrine carcinoma. The most aggressive forms of the disease are caused by smoking and especially develop in long time smokers. Majority of smokers start at an adolescent age or adult youth stage and by the time they reach 50s or 60s, they have accumulated millions of carcinogens large enough to crush down their lung chambers. Two packs of cigarettes daily and smoking for a period of 30 years makes 60 pack-yards in life, arguably high enough for intolerable level of intoxication. But even if many people believe smoking relieves their stress, successful quit or recovery from smoking leads to lower stress levels, lower risk of anxiety and depression. In this situation, you improve the quality and quantity of your life. The benefits of this outcome need a good level of cessation or counseling to all people and specifically to active smokers. In our daily practice, we usually do active and regular smoking cessation procedures to help patients with lung cancer and families to stop cigarette smoking and any other replacement in the due course of their lives. Massive lung cancer quitting cessation is organised in many of modern health facilities to sensitise people from dangers of smoking as a major health hazard. There is proven evidence that smoking cessation can help people to quit smoking successfully. Health care professionals work with people or smokers to set a quit date of smoking and avoid triggers that sabotage people to abandon the behaviour. Lung cancer risk in smokers can be significantly diminished in a time-dependent manner following smoking cessation. There is proven evidence that relative risk of lung cancer in former smokers compared to non-smokers is approximately 16 times reduction for the first 5 years of abstinence, 8 times for the next 5 years, and gradually declines to 2 times during the next 30 years. More recent studies confirm that cessation of smoking in middle life reduces risk of subsequent lung cancer. Whereas the link between tobacco and lung cancer risk is well established for people who actively smoke, the relationship between environmental tobacco smoke exposure (passive smoking) and lung cancer risk in nonsmokers appears more controversial. Individuals exposed to passive smoke inhale tobacco carcinogens at levels significantly lower than active smokers. Incontrovertible evidence that link cigarette smoking with lung cancer and the devastating social and economic impact of tobacco abuse has prompted many countries to initiate programs that decrease tobacco addiction. Some of the efforts include legislation that regulate tobacco components, increase taxes on cigarettes, ban tobacco advertisements and smoking in public places as well as development of smoking cessation clinics. There is a minor genetic predisposition to development of lung cancer as observed with non-smoking family members who develop lung cancer at an early age and in families with multiple afflicted members. This point has been a subject for research in the cancer management field.
