LungBlog

For the sampling of mediastinal lymph nodes in patients with lung cancer, use of real-time endobronchial ultrasound-guided transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) appears to be a safe and effective approach. These results were published in the journal Thorax.

Modern three-dimensional radiation therapy has been proven to be more successful at curing lung cancer than older two-dimensional radiation therapy for some patients with early stage lung cancer, according to a new study in the September 1, 2006 edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO).

The response rate of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was not improved with the addition of mitomycin C to docetaxel as second-line chemotherapy.  Researchers in Spain conducted a study “to evaluate the feasibility, toxicity and efficacy of the combination of docetaxel and mitomycin C as second-line chemotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC. Thirty-eight patients with histologically confirmed, locally advanced or metastatic NSCLC were included in this phase II trial.”

In New York state, patients who want to make sure they don’t have the most deadly form of cancer can’t ask a doctor to use advanced scanning methods to check them for it.? It may seem like an unnecessary paradox, but the risks associated with a false finding of lung cancer symptoms are real enough that a number of other states similarly bar the practice.

N1 disease in non-small cell lung cancer represents a heterogeneous patient subgroup with a 5-year survival of approximately 40%. Few reports have evaluated the correlation between N1 disease and tumor recurrence or which subgroup of patients would most benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy.

Although female smokers are nearly twice as likely to develop lung cancer as their male counterparts, new research suggests they’re about 50 per cent more likely to survive the disease.

In patients with limited-stage, small-cell lung cancer being treated with chemotherapy, survival is not affected if thoracic radiotherapy is administered early or later in the course of chemotherapy (cycle 2 versus cycle 6), results of a British study suggest.  Far more relevant, the investigators observed, is that patients do markedly better when they receive the entire dose of chemotherapy.

A synthetic molecule that triggers cancer cells to commit suicide was effective in mouse cancer models, scientists said. They hope the finding will herald in new drugs that can activate this mechanism that causes cancer cells to hasten their own death.? The molecule killed human lung cancer cells and kidney cancer cells in mouse models and may give rise to drugs that can potentially activate the “executioner” mechanism in human cancer cells.

You can’t see it. You can’t even smell it. But in Colorado, it’s all around.  Radon, a colorless, odorless, radioactive gas, is considered the second-leading cause of lung cancer, behind only tobacco smoke.