Lung Cancer Treatment
There are several options to treat lung cancer. Depending on what stage your cancer is, your doctor would suggest different treatments.
SURGERY
Surgical resection is the most successful option for a cure for patients diagnosed with lung cancer. For surgery, cancer must be completely resectable, and the patient must be able to tolerate the proposed surgical intervention. Indeed, surgery for lung cancer is prominent in diagnosis, staging, curative treatment, and palliative care. Mediastinal staging, in particular, is paramount because the prognostic information it provides is invaluable in determining the appropriate surgery. Surgery is also depending on the type, location, and stage of patients lung cancer and other medical conditions. Lung cancer surgery will remove carcinoids tumors along with some surrounding lung tissue. Removing the tumor with surgery is considered the best option when the cancer is localized and unlikely to have spread.
THERAPIES
Other than surgery following therapies are used in Lung Cancer treatment;
- Chemotherapy
- Targeted Therapy
- Radiation Therapy
- Immunotherapy
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is usually used alone after surgery and it uses drugs to kill cancer cells that may remain after surgery and it may also be used combined with Radiation Therapy. It may also be used to shrink large cancer cells and tumors before surgery so that they can remove easily.These drugs may be taken both intravenously and orally.
Radiation Therapy
The first major trial of radiation therapy (RT) in the treatment of unresectable lung cancer was performed by the Veterans Administration Lung Cancer Study Group.Radiation therapy uses strong and powerful X rays to kill cancer cells. Patients with non-small cell lung cancer are treated with radiation therapy. Surgery is further followed by therapies such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, etc
Radiotherapy might be used in the following conditions;
- If a patient is not healthy enough for surgery.
- It is used to shrink lung tumor before surgery.
- To kill a small area of lung cancer.