1. Deadliest of All Cancers
If you're a smoker, remember that tobacco can be deadly for your lungs. And depending on where the cancer is spreading--the primary tumor (T), the extent of regional lymph node involvement (N), and the presence or absence of distant metastases (M)--staging helps in getting a handle on the disease.
2. You Still Have a Chance!
Stage 1 has the disease confined to the lung, especially the type called non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) occurring in 20 percent of all the lung cancers. Your physician could use conventional chest radiography, magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and other scanning procedures to visualize the tumor. It could range from less than 3 cm across to complete lung involvement. Stereotactic radiation therapy (SRT) and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) are available for patients unfit for surgery, according to research reviewed in Oncologist, March 2008 edition. However, it is best confined to Stage 0, within the first few layers of cells in the lung. Otherwise, your chances of living are reduced by half and you could kick the bucket in 2 to 4 months! The American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) states that 20 percent of all limited-stage disease can be cured with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. For all patients with limited-stage disease, median survival is 16 to 22 months.
3. Keep it Close to Your Chest
Some things are best kept close enough, and lung cancer is one of them. If you are at this stage where the lymph nodes in the area are enlarged, scanning can still reveal if surgery, radiation or chemotherapy could help. Indeed, patients with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have the highest chance of survival. In Stage 2, studies followed over a 5-year period showed that 30 percent of all patients survived.
4. Struggling for the Breath of Life?
More serious cases show up with organ damage, engulfing chest wall, diaphragm, food-pipe, obstruction of the blood vessels and nerves in the area. For stages 2 and 3, surgery followed by chemotherapy is the current standard of care, according to latest research reported in the Journal of National Comprehensive Cancer Network March 2008 issue.
5. All is Not Lost
By now, lung cancer would have spread from the chest to all across the body--liver and kidney, bone and brain, for instance. It is called metastasis. "Extensive-stage disease," especially the non-small cell lung cancer, "is primarily treated with chemotherapy with a high initial response rate of 60 to 70 percent but with a median survival of 10 months," according to the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) clinical practice guidelines published in September 2007 issue of Chest.
