Cancer is one of the health problems that are facing a significant proportion of population in America and the rest of the world. The morbidity and mortality rate due to cancer is significantly high. The existing statistics shows that about 1806590 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in America in 2020. The population was most likely to be diagnosed with the leading types of cancers that included breast, lung, prostate, and colon and rectum cancers. The national data shows that about 43% of cancers diagnosed in the US in 2020 were colorectal, lung and prostate cancers. Nurses play an important role in the prevention and management of cancer. Nurses educate the population about the risk factors, signs and symptoms, diagnosis and importance of early treatment. Nurses also educate the public about the preventive strategies for the most common types of cancers that effect the population. Therefore, this essay examines cancer and its management using the nursing process approach. The paper examines topics that include diagnosis and staging of cancer, complications, factors contributing to the yearly incidence, role of the American Cancer Society in supporting cancer patients and utilization of nursing process in cancer management.
Diagnosis and Staging of Cancer
Diagnosis of cancer utilizes both subjective and objective assessments. The subjective assessments focus on the symptoms that patients with cancer present with to the hospital. Patients with suspected cancer presents to the hospital with a myriad of signs and symptoms. The signs and symptoms include bone pain, weight loss, fatigue, fever, changes in the skin, sores or wounds that do not heal, hoarseness that do not respond to common treatments unusual bleeding, anemia, and difficulties in passing urine in men among others. Comprehensive history taking is therefore essential to come up with an accurate diagnosis of the specific cancer that the patient might be suffering from during a clinical visit. Objective assessments are utilized in the diagnosis of cancer. The objective assessments include observation, percussion, auscultation, and palpation. There is also the utilization of clinical investigations such as lab works, imaging tests and biopsy. Laboratory investigations show whether there is an elevation or reduction in biomarkers for cancers. Imaging tests that are utilized in the process include CT scans, X-rays, bone scan, nuclear scan, and MRI scan (Hinds & Linder, 2020). Tissue biopsy is also done to provide an accurate assessment and diagnosis of cancer.
Staging of cancer occurs once one is diagnosed with the disease. Staging is important to enable the determination of the most effective aggressive treatment that can be adopted to slow the spread of cancerous cells. Staging of cancer can be done using a number of approaches. One of the approaches is the TNM staging system. The TNM staging system focuses on the tumor size, number of lymph nodes affected by cancer, and if the cancerous cells have metastasized or not. The classification based on tumor is measured as TX (tumor cannot be measured), T0 (tumor cannot be found), and T1, T2, T3, and T4 to represent the size of the main tumor, with the high the T number implying more growth of tumor cells to the surrounding tissues. The classification based on regional lymph nodes is measured as NX(cancer in surrounding lymph nodes not measurable), NO (there is no cancer in surrounding lymph nodes), N1, N2, and N3 to demonstrate spread of cancerous cells to the surrounding lymph nodes. The diagnoses based on metastasis is denoted as follows; MX (metastasis not measurable), M0 (cancer has not metastasized) and M1 (cancer has metastasized) (Charnay-Sonnek & Murphy, 2019).
The other way of staging cancer adopts the stage 0 to IV approach. In this approach, stage 0 cancer implies the presence of abnormal cells but not metastasized, stage I,II, and III implying presence of cancer, with the higher the number the larger the size of tumors and metastasize. Stage IV implies that cancer has metastasized to distant body parts (Hinds & Linder, 2020).
Complications of Cancer
Cancer is associated with a number of complications. One of them is cardiac tamponade. Cardiac tamponade occurs due to the compression of the cardiac muscle secondary to fluid accumulation in the pericardiac sac. The compression of the myocardium by the accumulated fluids lead to inadequate cardiac filling in the diastole phase of cardiac cycle, hence, reduced stroke volume. Breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, and lung cancer are associated with this complication (Russo et al., 2018). The other complication of cancer is increased intracranial pressure. Increased intracranial pressure is attributable to the rise in the volume of meninges and skull. The cause of increased intracranial pressure is metastasis of cancer cells to the brain. Often, p
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