These days, quite often you would have heard people talking about a word, 'Cyst.' Somebody had had a problem of epilepsy, and the treating doctor had told him about a cyst in the brain. Quite often you would have heard your acquaintance complaining about pain in the right upper side of the abdomen and jaundice, and it was found later that a cyst in his liver was the cause of it. Also, you would have heard or seen your relative suffering from severe dry cough along with chest pain and coughing out blood. When on a doctor's advice a chest X-ray was done, a cyst was found in the lung. Sometimes you do not have any problem, and when you get a routine medical check-up for job placement or for going abroad, you will be surprised to see a large round white shadow of a cyst in the chest X-ray on one side or both sides.

How does this cyst enter a human body?

In our country, there is an abundance of filth, dirt, and a network of open drains. The stray dogs infested with cysts empty out their stools in these very spots, leading to pollution of not only ground soil but also air. In close proximity to these contaminated sites along the roads, you will find open stalls of Indian fast foods like "chaat," "bhelpuri," and fruit juice vendors. As soon as you eat this cyst-infested fast food, not only food alone but eggs too will enter your intestine, and you just cannot notice these cysts as they are too tiny to be seen with your naked eyes.

How does this cyst reach the lung?

After reaching the intestine, the worm inside the cyst breaks out of the covering and roams freely. It then punctures the wall of the intestine and enters the adjacent blood pipes and then blood circulation. It then, through these blood pipes, reaches various parts of the body, especially the liver and lung, where it makes its permanent abode. After settling down in any of these favourite places, it starts growing in size and constructs for itself an outer covering for safety and gives birth to a hydatid cyst, which gradually starts increasing in size.

Who are the victims of the disease of cysts in the lung?

If you or your children play with stray dogs or your pet dog, and he is neither vaccinated regularly nor his proper hygiene is maintained, or your pet spends most of the daytime outside the house near open dirty drains rather than inside the house, you and possibly your children can become victims of cysts. If you and your children do not wash hands with soap before eating or after touching the earth and soil and then, without washing their hands with soap straightaway, go for dinner/lunch, you and your children are most likely to be infested with lung or liver cysts.

What will happen if no treatment is done?

If you refuse to get treated for the lung cyst, sooner or later you will lose your life. Because of the enormous space available inside the chest, the lung cyst has an ample opportunity to enlarge rapidly and becomes gigantic in size in a very short time. If ever such a patient coughs severely or receives a strong blow on the chest or sustains a chest injury, the enlarged hydatid cyst of the lung gets ruptured.

What is the correct treatment of the lung cyst?

To decide the treatment of a lung cyst, you have to take into account some factors like the size of the cyst, the location of the cyst, and other associated medical conditions of the patient. Surgery is the ideal and the best treatment for a lung cyst. A person suffering from a cyst in the lung must get it removed surgically as early as possible.

The writer is the Senior Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgeon at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, Sarita Vihar, New Delhi. E-mail: drpandeykk@gmail.com