eshant12
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My mother is 58 years old and got CA lung Carcinoma, the intial symptom was coughing and less breathning due to pleural effusion at right left sides of lung. We got Fluid out with syringe time to time and then she had gone with 3 cycles of chemotherapy and agter doing Pet Scan it was looking like the tumour in lymph nobes is getting reduced and then doctor has started her maintainance chemo therapy and now it has been 3 cycles of maintainance. Now she has again started complaining about breathing problem and in Xray it has been observed that fluid has started coming back. Please advise what should we do. I want to take her in to world's best hospital who can make her cure with lung problem.
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Reply # - September 16, 2016, 01:53 PM
Hi eshant12,
Hi eshant12,
Welcome to Grace. I'm very sorry about your mother's cancer diagnosis. We absolutely cannot say what your mother should do, that isn't possible from what we do and it's not legal. What we do is discuss what standard practices are and aren't in similar situations as well as what is being researched. So I hope we can still help.
When someone has pleural effusion (a build up of fluid in the lung cavity) the fluid keeps the lung from expanding thus causing shortness of breath and chest pain. There are some options when a PE continues to return after draining. The hope is that if it's caused from lung cancer that anti cancer treatment like chemo will fix the PE. If that doesn't the problem then there are optional procedures that can be helpful. Following are links on the subject starting with an introduction to PE,
http://cancergrace.org/lung/2007/03/17/intro-to-pleural-effusions/
This link provides a series of short videos with transcripts on managing recurrent pleural effusions, http://cancergrace.org/lung/tag/malignant-pleural-effusion/
If it's possible a 2nd opinion is never a bad idea. Another oncologist's opinion can add additional ideas on treatment options such as targeted therapies and gene mutation testing. I'm afraid that when lung cancer is stage IV it's most often not curable though it is usually very treatable. The exception is if there are only one or 2 sites of metastases it's possible to remove all cancer (cure) where all are surgically removed or radiated followed by adjuvant treatment. This is a very aggressive treatment and can easily cause more harm than good so any conversation should be had among experienced oncologists in a tumor board such as is found at large research and teaching hospitals. Here is a discussion on that, note the post is followed by question/answers http://cancergrace.org/lung/2014/02/23/defining-olig/
I hope this is helpful for a good start,
Janine