There are many patients who have recently been diagnosed with pulmonary nodules in the outpatient clinic and ask why there are so many people who have been diagnosed with pulmonary nodules recently, what is the reason, I did not have pulmonary nodules last year, but I have them this year, and there are many people around her, who have been coughing since the beginning of the year, and found lung nodules when they were examined by lung CT, and her girlfriend also found pulmonary nodules, which are still multiple, what is going on, is it caused by viral infection?Whether it has anything to do with vaccination, I think it's necessary to talk about this question, because too many people ask it this way.
Lung nodules are not just as many as there are now.
Lung nodules do have a large proportion of infections caused, this has always been the same, many people did not take it seriously before, now there are more popular science on the Internet, many people pay more and more attention to nodules, in fact, people who have recently detected nodules, many of them have existed before, but they have not done CT, and they have done lung CT first in the hospital during three years, so that a large number of lung nodules that have been formed before have been found. This has caused the current situation of nodule blowout.
In fact, the increase of pulmonary nodules is a comprehensive social phenomenon, first of all, several factors related to pulmonary nodules, such as environmental pollution, smoking, infection, etc., the seeds of ** just bloomed and fruited together at this time period, on the other hand, the accuracy of CT is getting higher and higher, which together leads to the current situation that a large number of nodules are found. Let's discuss these two points.
Environmental pollution factors.
You may not remember PM25What year was the hottest time to stir-fry, I remember it very clearly, because I happened to be doing PM2 when I was studying for my PhD that year5 and the topic of the relationship between lung diseases, I remember standing in our office on the 8th floor and I couldn't see the 20-storey twin buildings of Fudan University next door, the distance between the two I measured on the map, the straight-line distance is only 400 meters, there is no direct evidence of the relationship between environmental pollution and lung nodules, but the curve of lung cancer incidence in China is just similar to the curve of environmental pollution, but it is almost 5-10 years later, and the early form of many lung cancers is lung nodules, so 2024 and the previous three to five years may be just the time period when environmental pollution factors bloom and bear fruit. In fact, the number of thoracic surgeries in many hospitals peaked in 2018-2019, and although medical work was affected in the next three years, this peak did not shrink significantly, but it did not increase significantly.
Smoking factor. China is a big smoker, with about 3 smokers in 2011500 million, 3600 million, the number of people has not fluctuated, the overall remains stable, but there are some subtle changes, one is the problem of smoking younger, some young people start smoking at a younger age, in addition, e-cigarette smokers may not be counted into the total number of smokers, the second is that the number of female smokers is gradually increasing, although the proportion of female smokers in the total number is still very low, but the trend in recent years is gradually increasing, especially in e-cigarettes, the number of female e-cigarette smokers is more obvious. Smoking is one of the important and well-defined factors that lead to lung cancer.
Infectious factors. In fact, the infection factors have led to lung nodules for a long time, lung nodules are a kind of scarring manifestation, the infection generally develops quickly, and may lead to a large area of lesions in the short term, just like high tide, the waves suddenly cover the beach, and finally subside and like low tide, some shells will be left on the beach, just like nodules, China is a big country with tuberculosis, and tuberculosis is easy to be in ** The sequelae of nodules left in the lungs, other pathogens, such as viruses, including influenza, new crown, etc., as well as fungal infections may form nodules in the lungs.