Lung Cancer / Mesothelioma
In my last post I covered much of the controversy about whether patients with stage IIIA, N2-node positive NSCLC should be treated with induction therapy (chemotherapy or chemo/radiation) followed by surgery, or an alternative approach of chemo along with radiation delivered at a definitive dose (curative, not just the supplemental, lower doses used in induction therapy). In […]
2 CommentsIt’s over, and I won (did you doubt me?). As I mentioned in a recent prior post, today I spoke at the Eighth International Lung Cancer Congress, where I was assigned the topic of speaking in favor of chemo/radiation as the more appropriate standard of care, with the opposing view, that surgery is the […]
2 CommentsFor many years, patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) were often not offered treatment. Surgery was offered to rare, selected patients who tended to be much younger and more fit than a typical patient with MPM, but we’ll talk about surgery later. Chemotherapy was only very inconsistently offered to the vast majority of unresectable […]
0 CommentsWe haven’t covered this on OncTalk yet, but it’s a real shortcoming that I haven’t discussed malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). Although it’s not exactly lung cancer, it’s another chest cancer that is often managed by thoracic oncology specialists like myself, and the only reason I haven’t introduced it until now is that it’s such an unusual cancer, accounting for just 2000-3000 cases […]
0 CommentsI’m heading off today to Hawaii (Maui), which I must hasten to add is for a conference, the Eighth International Lung Cancer Congress, not just a vacation, although working in Hawaii often seems better than time off at home. The meeting not only includes a lot of good lectures and debates, but it gives […]
9 Comments One of the central ideas in management of advanced NSCLC is that many two-drug chemo combinations have been compared and show essentially superimposable results, as I described in a prior post.
(click to enlarge)
Perhaps we’re underachieving by using a “one size fits all” approach, getting everyone to a middle ground that falls short of what we might do […]
As I described in prior post, prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) is established as a treatment approach for patients with LD-SCLC who have had a complete or “good partial” response to chemo and radiation. Some physicians also recommend PCI for patients with ED-SCLC who have experienced a very good response, since about 10% of the patients on […]
1 CommentsMany members have asked questions about increased risk of lung cancer among family members of people who have developed lung cancer. Overall, I have not highlighted this, partly because we don’t tend to highlight genetics as a major contributor of lung cancer risk. But the fact is that 10-15% of people who develop lung […]
12 CommentsI’ve been meaning to write on tumor markers detectable in the blood for the management of lung cancer. These are proteins that are produced by some tumors, and the idea is that the levels of the tumor markers in the blood can potentially be used to monitor the status of the disease. For prostate-specific antigen in […]
2 CommentsOne of the more intriguing presentations at ASCO this year was the one in which a novel vaccine against a protein called MAGE-A3 was tested in patients who underwent surgery and then received the vaccine post-operatively. What is MAGE-A3? It’s a nearly tumor-specific antigen, which means that it’s a protein seen almost exclusively on […]
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