Basic Cancer Info

The third and final part of my conversation with Drs. Tom Hensing from North Shore Health System in Chicago and David Jackman from Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston covered a presentation of an Asian never-smoking woman with an advanced lung adenocarcinoma, the demographic picture most closely associated with potentially but not necessarily having an EGFR mutation or ALK rearrangement.

One of the most common questions. we receive is why people are told that surgery isn't an appropriate option for metastatic disease. If you can see the areas where there is active cancer, why can't you just take it out?

The second part of my conversation with Drs. Tom Hensing from North Shore Health System in Chicago and David Jackman from Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston covered a case of a relatively young, generally healthy woman diagnosed with a lung adenocarcinoma that turned out to be stage IV.

When I was a medical student, the question about lung cancer that was always asked on "the Boards" had to do with the difference between stage IIIA and stage IIIB non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The reason this question was always asked is because patients with stage IIIA NSCLC might be considered for surgery, whereas patients with stage IIIB NSCLC would not be considered for surgery and instead would be treated with chemotherapy and radiation. The idea is that young doctors should be able to make that distinction and to direct patients to the appropriate specialist/treatment.

Several weeks ago, my colleagues Dr. Tom Hensing from North Shore Health System in Chicago, affiliated with the University of Chicago, and Dr. David Jackman from Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, were kind enough to take the time to go over a series of cases in a webinar format. We reviewed the time line of several patients with advanced NSCLC, focusing on two central questions:

1) For various clinical situations, which molecular markers would you be inclined to recommend?

This is the second of two parts in the Reference Library by Dr. Gadgeel on small cell lung cancer.

Patients with Limited Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer

General Introduction to Small Cell Lung Cancer Lung cancer consists of two major types: small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Approximately 85% percent of all lung cancer patients have NSCLC, and the remaining 15% have SCLC.

It's been two and a half years since I described a phase IIB trial of Fotolyn (pralatrexate), a relatively new chemotherapy agent, being compared to Tarceva (erlotinib) in current or ex-smokers with previously treated advanced NSCLC.

Here's the first of a series of posts on key presentations on lung cancer from ASCO 2010, as reviewed by myself and Dr. Nate Pennell of our faculty here several weeks ago. The first topic we covered was the very interesting if troubling Canadian BR.19 trial of post-operative Iressa (gefitinib) vs. placebo, as summarized by Dr. Pennell. Dr.

Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, or BAC, is a unique subtype of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that has unique features in terms of the demographics of who gets it, how it appears on scans, how it often behaves, and potentially in how it responds to treatment. It is a subset of lung cancer for which most of what we know emerged in the last 10 years, with our understanding of this entity, and even the definition of BAC, still evolving. What is BAC? BAC was first identified and defined as a separate subtype of lung cancer by Dr.