LungBlog

Boe Tucker, a country music manager who was the guiding force in his daughter Tanya Tucker’s career, died Thursday after battling lung cancer.

Lung cancer is second only to prostate cancer for men and breast cancer for women when it comes to new cancer cases in the United States. But it’s a different story when it comes to survival: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women, killing more than 160,000 people a year in this country.
   The deaths of ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, a former smoker, and Dana Reeve, a non-smoker, have drawn new attention to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of this disease.
   The diagnosis and management of lung cancer, along with new research, have gained recent attention in the media and world medical community.

Kela Deibel is defying the odds.

The 58-year-old Blue Anchor resident was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1998. Now, after numerous and various treatments, she has seen no growth of her cancer in the last eight months.

Only 15 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer, the nation’s largest cancer killer, live longer than five years, according to the American Association for Cancer Research.

Leading cause of cancer deaths gets too few dollars for prevention or cure

Researchers in America have discovered that vaccinating mice with embryonic stem cells prevented lung cancer in those animals that had had cancer cells transplanted into them after the vaccination or that had been exposed to cancer-causing chemicals.

A group of long-term Marlboro smokers has filed an action in federal court in New York to force Marlboro maker Philip Morris USA Inc. to give them regular low-dose CT scans to catch possible early signs of lung cancer.

The action is unusual because it seeks only medical screenings for people whose smoking habit has put them at increased risk of lung cancer, said plaintiffs attorney Jerome H. Block of Levy Phillips & Konigsberg in New York.

Wednesday, Governor John Baldacci proclaimed November as Lung Cancer Awareness Month in Maine. Speaking at a State House ceremony, Baldacci said Maine has made great strides in reducing teenage smoking and cutting exposure to second-hand smoke.

TECHNOLOGY USED IN THE AUTO INDUSTRY HAS NOW PUT MEDICAL EXPERTS IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT. Rachel Oesch REPORTS ON A NEW NAVIGATIONAL SYSTEM THAT COULD LEAD TO EARLIER LUNG CANCER DETECTION.DOCTOR IMRE NOTH  IS VIRTUALLY STEERING HIS WAY TOWARD A SUSPICIOUS LESION DEEP IN A PATIENT’S LUNG.

An estimated one million people worldwide are diagnosed with lung cancer each year. A vast number of them die within five years because their condition is too advanced to treat effectively.

A new report in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that the use of computed tomography imaging  — better known as a CT scan — before lung cancer symptoms appear can greatly reduce mortality.