Lung Cancer / Mesothelioma
The setting of unresectable, stage IIIA or IIIB NSCLC (without a malignant pleural effusion) is currently one for which what we feel is best for the patient isn’t necessarily something for which we have good evidence. For fit patients, there is a strong consensus that giving concurrent chemo with radiation provides a modestly but […]
0 CommentsAs a follow-up to my last post on the appeal of developing new regimens for combining with radiation in treatment of locally advanced unresectable NSCLC, I wanted to highlight work being done by the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALBG), one of the major cancer cooperative research groups in the US. As I mentioned […]
0 CommentsWhile there have been new agents introduced and rapidly changing standards in advanced NSCLC, another 40% of patients with NSCLC have locally advanced (stage III) NSCLC, many of whom with disease that is not resectable but is potentially curable with agressive chemo and radiation. Last year’s ASCO meeting included results […]
2 CommentsHere’s a situation in which I learned something from the questions raised by people here online. A handful of people with extensive disease small cell lung cancer (ED-SCLC) in the last year or two have mentioned receiving radiation for areas of residual apparent disease after receiving initial chemotherapy. I had noted that I had never […]
0 CommentsThe standard of care for at least stage I and II NSCLC is surgery, sometimes followed by chemotherapy. We know, however, that not every patient who presents with early stage NSCLC is healthy enough to pursue surgery, whether due to general age-related or other illnesses, or due specifically to a low pulmonary reserves, usually […]
0 CommentsIn a very recent post I provided an introduction to the special case in NSCLC known as a Pancoast tumor, including a historical perspective of how it has evolved from being perceived initially as an untreatable, uniformly fatal diagnosis to a cancer that could be cured with radiation and then surgery in a significant minority of […]
4 CommentsOne subtype of lung cancer that we haven’t specifically talked about is called a Pancoast tumor, named for the doctor who first described them. A Pancoast tumor is a NSCLC that is located in a groove called the superior sulcus (Pancoast tumors are also sometimes referred to as superior sulcus tumors), at the top […]
6 CommentsDespite the fact that a very significant proportion of the “real world” patients have considerable medical problems such as markedly decreased lung function (pretty common with many years of smoking), weight loss (5 or 10% of body weight is usually considered a problem), or otherwise are not able to be very active. The vast majority of clinical […]
0 CommentsAs a follow-up to my last post and an end to this extended discusison of locally advanced NSCLC before moving to other topics, I’ll just cover some more recent work on the topic of chemo followed by chemo and radiation for stage III NSCLC. In that post, I showed that over the past several […]
0 CommentsThe last topic in our discussion of the evolving field of optimal treatment for locally advanced NSCLC is the potential role for induction chemotherapy before radiation, or, more commonly concurrent chemo/radiation (CT/RT). In my recent post, we covered the new findings from ASCO 2007 that our common practice of giving concurrent CT/RT followed by consolidation chemo, most commonly with taxotere, […]
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