Persistent cough or hoarseness
You don’t have to worry about a common cough, but if this cough comes with blood, you should be concerned. “Most coughs are not cancer,” says Therese Bartholomew Bevers, M.D., professor of clinical cancer prevention and the medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
“But certainly, a persistent cough needs to be evaluated to see if it could be lung cancer.” Your physician should recommend a chest X-ray or CT scan to get rid of cancer as a possibility.