Chemotherapy as a Lung Cancer Treatment - Chemotherapy for Lung Cancer - My doctor advised chemotherapy for my lung cancer. ... Initial treatment for lung cancer usually involves the use of 2 or more drugs. .."Welcome to BlogEngine.NET" "powered by wordpress" "leave comment" "site:edu inurl:blog"
Treatment of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer
In general, early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (stage 0-II) is treated with surgery. Surgeons cure many patients with early-stage lung cancer with a single operation. Radiation therapy can also be used to treat and cure early-stage lung tumors in people who cannot tolerate surgery. Stage III non-small cell lung cancer has spread so much that surgery or radiation alone is either impossible, or not enough to treat the disease. Patients with stage III disease have a high risk of the cancer returning, either in the same place, or at a distant location, even if surgery or radiation has completely removed the cancer. For this reason, doctors generally do not recommend immediate surgery, and may recommend immediate chemotherapy for patients with stage III disease.Chemotherapy can shrink a stage IIIA tumor, and make it easier for the surgeon to remove, or easier for the radiation oncologist to irradiate. In theory, since chemotherapy travels throughout the body it can kill cancer cells that have traveled to distant sites.Because of the highrisk of distant and local recurrence, stage IIIB tumors are usually not removed surgically, no matter how effective chemotherapy might be. For these patients, chemotherapy delivered at the same time as radiation has been shown to improve the ability of radiation to shrink the cancer. With these concepts in mind, patients with stage III disease are generally treated with some combination of chemotherapy followed by surgery, or chemotherapy followed by radiation. Some patients, especially those with stage IIIB disease, are treated with chemotherapy at the same time as radiation. Treatment of stage III non-small cell lung cancer with combination therapy has resulted in prolonged survival for many patients. Delivering chemotherapy and radiation at the same time may cause greater side effects.
Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer or stage IIIB disease due to cancer cells in fluid around the lung (called "advanced" disease) are typically not treated with surgery or radiation. Rarely, a single brain or adrenal metastasis can be removed surgically or radiation can treat a single site of disease. However, patients with advanced disease are at very high risk for their cancer growing in a different location, so most patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer are treated with chemotherapy alone.
The goal of chemotherapy is to shrink the cancer, relieve discomfort caused by the cancer, and slow the spread of the disease. Rarely, chemotherapy can cause metastatic lung cancer to disappear completely, but these patients are still at very high risk of cancer returning. Therefore, patients with advanced disease are never considered "cured" of their cancer no matter how well the chemotherapy works. These patients must be followed closely by their doctors, and require chronic or intermittent chemotherapy to control their disease.
In these patients, highly toxic treatment approaches should be avoided in favor of treatments designed to improve both quantity, and quality of life. Chemotherapy has been proven to improve both quantity and quality of life for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
