Is my mother's lung cancer hereditary?

If a mother has lung cancer, will it be passed on to her children? I believe this is the most concerned issue for many mothers with lung cancer. Is cancer hereditary? This is a question that people are generally concerned about. According to the results of current scientific research, very few cancers are directly determined by genetics.

Animal experiments and clinical studies have proven that smoking can cause cancer. There are many smokers in the population, but few suffer from cancer. This is related to the amount of smoking and the length of time of smoking, but mainly to the physical constitution of the person. The physical constitution is determined by genetics, which is often referred to as susceptibility in medicine. Even if a person has a susceptible constitution, cancer will only occur under the influence of external carcinogenic factors.

In clinical practice, it is also common to see that the offspring of cancer patients have a higher cancer rate than the normal population, which is because genetic factors play a certain role. For example, the children of gastric cancer patients have a 3-4 times higher chance of getting gastric cancer than the average person. Another example is that if the mother has breast cancer, the incidence of breast cancer in the daughter is 3 times higher than the average person. Other cancers such as esophageal cancer, liver cancer, and colon cancer also have similar phenomena. This phenomenon is difficult to explain with a common living environment, because many family members often live in different places, but their incidence rate is still higher than those without a family history of cancer. This can only show that the influence of genetic factors is greater, but it cannot be said to be hereditary cancer.

Some diseases are not cancer, but they can turn into cancer and are hereditary. Clinically, they are called hereditary tumor syndrome. For example, familial colon polyposis, polyps can turn into colon cancer. Such patients must be vigilant and closely monitored. The genetic problem of cancer is very complicated.

The occurrence of cancer is still an unsolved mystery. Therefore, when someone in your family has cancer, you must not let your imagination run wild, but stay in a good mood, improve your immunity, learn and understand the basic knowledge of cancer, and help your family build confidence in fighting cancer.