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Dr. Jack West is a medical oncologist and thoracic oncology specialist who is the Founder and previously served as President & CEO, currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Resource for Advancing Cancer Education (GRACE)

 

Might some lung cancers not require treatment?
Author
Howard (Jack) West, MD

Here's a brief video I did for Swedish Medical Center that discusses the issue that a minority of lung cancers might not actually require intervention. It seems counter-intuitive, and we generally presume that anything called cancer requires urgent management, but we also know that many prostate cancers, breast cancers, and some others like chronic lymphocytic leukemia might follow such an indolent natural history that they represent overdiagnoses and wouldn't necessarily have any impact on a person's survival. I discuss a couple of scenarios that we see in some of our patients that aren't typical, but they're worth knowing about...since for some patients the best treatment for something technically called a lung cancer may actually be no intervention at all.

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