Throat cancer is a malignant disease that greatly threatens human health; patients would suffer from huge pain and suffering if they have not been treated and if it is in advanced stage, cancer cells would easily spread and metastase to other parts of the body and cause other diseases. Occurrence of throat cancer is associated with smoking, alcohol abuse, long-term inhalation of harmful substances, papilloma virus infection and other factors. Throat cancer’s incidence rate is about 1 to 5% among systemic cancers, and it ranks the third and is preceded only by nasopharyngeal cancer and nasal and sinus cancer in the field of otolaryngology. It appeals to occur at the age of 50 to 70 and is more common seen in men than women, therefore which factors are susceptible to throat cancer?

1 Smoking: clinical observation found that most throat cancer patients are heavy smokers; actually the greater the amount of smoking and the longer the time of smoking, the higher risk for people suffering from throat cancer. According to relevant data show that the incidence rate of throat cancer is proportional to daily time of smoking and the amount of smoking. The bigger daily smoking quantity and the longer smoking time (or the younger for starting to smoke "secondhand cigarette"), the higher the risk of throat cancer people would face. 88% 98% of patients with throat cancer have a long history of smoking; more than half of them smoke than 20 cigarettes a day; women are no exception for this. Among the patients who are died of throat cancer, the number of patients who smoked 40 cigarettes or more a day is 13 times of the number of patients who don’t smoke.

2 Drinking: people who have smoking habits are more likely have drinking habits, and when smoking and drinking co-exist, it would overlap carcinogenic effects.

3 Air pollution: The incidence rate of throat cancer in urban area is higher than that in rural areas; air pollution of heavy industrial cities is more severe than that in light industrial cities.

4 The gender differences: men are significantly more than women, which may be related to increased androgen levels.

5 Viral infections, such as papilloma canceration: research showed that it may relate to papilloma virus infection.

6 Others: long-term observation found that part of vocal cord leukoplakia can develop into throat cancer, therefore vocal cord leukoplakia is considered as precancerous lesion. There is research suggested that chronic laryngitis has a certain relationship with throat cancer, thus patients who have chronic laryngitis and have not recovered for a long time, should be regularly observed to get rid of the possibility of canceration.

Experts of Modern Cancer Hospital Guangzhou remind that build up good living habits and control smoking and drinking alcoholics; In addition, once respiratory inflammation or throat diseases appear, patients must receive timely treatment to prevent deterioration into throat cancer.

*Surgery, in addition to the appropriate chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are effective in treating early cancer, but certain patients in late stage of cancer may not be tolerate surgery well as they can be relatively weak. A combination of carefully planned minimally invasive therapy, chemotherapy or radiotherapy can effectively reduce the side effects and discomfort of treatment and may help patient get better efficacy.