Dr. David Spigel, Sarah Cannon Cancer Center, outlines treatment options for squamous lung cancer.

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Squamous Lung Cancer, Part 3: Treatment Audio Podcast

Why do we care about lymph nodes when staging lung cancer?

Dr. David Spigel, Sarah Cannon Cancer Center, discusses the importance of genomic testing in squamous lung cancer.

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Dr. David Spigel, Sarah Cannon Cancer Center, describes the diagnosis, presentation and workup of squamous lung cancer.

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One of the challenges of the increased frequency of chest CT scans being done for screening of people at higher risk of lung cancer, or done more commonly for chest symptoms, is that lung nodules are very commonly found, but most the time they aren't cancer.  Most studies show that >90% of lung nodules are benign, but the majority lead to additional work-up, and in nearly 100% of cases, they cause anxiety for the patient. What if a blood test could help clarify the probability that someone doesn't have a lung cancer?

Over the past 10 years we've come to recognize that what is lumped together as "lung cancer" is actually a wide range of different cancers that behave in their own patterns and respond very differently to different treatments. Some of our greatest advances in the field have come from the recognition of the complex patterns, but it has also become more challenging to do trials for small groups that represent just 1 or 2% of the larger whole.

This Thursday, November 7th at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific, we'll gather in the Twitterverse for another one hour #LCSM (lung cancer social media) tweet chat.

For early stage NSCLC, the historic standard of care is a lobectomy.  But the reality is that with the median age of patients with new lung cancer a little over 70 and many patients quite sick from their lung cancer, COPD, and/or other medical problems, not every patient is a great candidate for surgery.

We're thrilled to be working again with LUNGevity Foundation to bring you another webinar just in time for November as lung cancer awareness month. On Tuesday, November 12th, at 2 PM Eastern/11 AM Pacific, Dr. David Spigel from Sarah Cannon Cancer Center in Nashville, TN will lead us in a very timely discussion of current and future management issues in squamous cell non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), a subtype that comprises 20-25% of NSCLC but has historically been more known for treatments you don't offer than for specific treatment options that are especially appealing for it.

We are in the midst of a remarkable transitional time in cancer care that is exciting but challenging, since we now have patients divided into smaller and smaller groups based on molecular markers.  Along with that, more and more patients and caregivers are participating in social media and online discussion groups.  What are the implications for these changes, and how can we use them to accelerate the pace of clinical research?  I'd like to focus on a couple of key questions for our next lung cancer tweetchat on September 26, at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific.