Treatment For Lung Cancer

Hi,

My name is Dr. Manish Kumar Singhal. Today, we will discuss treatment of lung cancer. Lung cancer, which was considered untreatable a decade ago, is now curable up to a large extent. The most important part of the treatment is to detect the cancer stage, for which we do the PET CT Scan. The treatment also depends on the subtypes of cancer. We are aware of ten different subtypes which are cured by different suitable drugs. To detect the subtypes, we need tissues for the biopsy, according to which we classify cancer into its subtypes. Under Stage 1, surgery is the preferred method of treatment. Stage 2 involves both surgery and chemotherapy, while the same is difficult to treat Stage 3.

Hence, Stage 3 is treated with the combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Stage 4 is treated with different types of chemotherapies, or targeted therapies or immunotherapies as per the detected subtype. The treatment has the success rate of 60%, 40%, 20% under Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 respectively. However, Stage 4 is considered hard to cure but the survival rate has considerably increased by 25% in the last 5 years. Early detection is the key against lung cancer, but even in the case of detection in later stages, we are now able to achieve better survival rates for a longer period of time than before.