Dr. Edward S. Kim from the Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, NC describes the use of serum tumor markers in various types of cancer, and the lack of a useful serum tumor marker in lung cancer.

The question of whether and how to use blood tests, and particularly serum tumor markers, to monitor the status of a lung cancer has come up often here.  There are a few places where we've covered this in text, but for those of you who would prefer a video format for your information gathering, here's a podcast I just did on that subject for Swedish Medical Center.

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePzQF6tFNZs[/embed]

I've been meaning to write on tumor markers detectable in the blood for the management of lung cancer. These are proteins that are produced by some tumors, and the idea is that the levels of the tumor markers in the blood can potentially be used to monitor the status of the disease.