Early diagnosis with alternative approaches: Innovation in lung cancer care

Abstract

Cancer is one of the primary concerns of mortality throughout the world in the present day. Among different types of cancers, lung cancer (LC) is predominant (21.77% of overall cancer caused death). It is classified into two major categories: oat cell or small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The mortality due to NSCLC (~85%) is almost six times higher than the SCLC (15%). The identification of risk factors can reduce cancer burden and human fatality; however, this cannot prevent the severity of LC. In this case, the early diagnosis of LC can be an effective pathway in providing better treatment to the patients, which eventually may result in less fatality. This article offers an overview of several existing screening methods for the early diagnosis of LC. Nevertheless, these methodologies have limitations of reliability towards the diagnosis of cancer malignancy. Therefore, the prospects of different alternative approaches and their challenges to overcome this barrier for the early diagnosis of malignant tumor cells have been articulated in this article.