What is lung cancer?

Lung cancer and smoking often, but not always, go hand in hand. As lung cancer stages advance, lung cancer symptoms include coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and bloody mucus. Treatment includes surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation.
Cancer of the lung, like all cancers, results from an abnormality in the body's basic unit of life, the cell. Normally, the body maintains a system of checks and balances on cell growth so that cells divide to produce new cells only when new cells are needed. Disruption of this system of checks and balances on cell growth results in an uncontrolled division and proliferation of cells that eventually forms a mass known as a tumor.