This week I read a fascinating paper in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology by Dr. Nicolas Girard and colleagues at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Besançon in France. I thought this would make a timely post as this seems to be one of the common questions that comes up again and again on the discussion boards.

A member recently asked me whether treatment in the second-line or later setting for advanced lung cancer would potentially improve survival at a cost of quality of life, or whether patients can benefit not only in terms of how long they live but also how they live during that time. Since advanced lung cancer, both NSCLC and SCLC, aren't generally able to be approached with curative intent, it's important for the treatment not to be worse than the disease. Ideally, patients will even feel better with treatment, rather than have to choose between quality of life (QoL) and quantity of life.