LungBlog

Which cancer kills more Americans than any other? The answer is lung cancer, and if you’re surprised you’re in good company. 

NewsCenter 5’s Heather Unruh profiled a local woman in the hopes of shinning a light on the growing epidemic.

Bonnie has survived lung cancer for nearly five years and is now working with her husband, Tony, and their entire family to raise awareness about the disease with an in your face campaign from coast to coast.Bonnie and Tony were shocked to learn there is no standardized screening test for lung cancer that is paid for by health insurance, unlike mammograms or colonoscopies.

“When we tell people the statistics, they generally go, ‘You’re kidding. I didn’t know that.’ They didn’t know that lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer. They didn’t know that it’s the number one cancer killer in the world,” said Tony.

The statistics are staggering. The National Institutes of Health estimates that 212,000 cases of lung cancer will be diagnosed this year. Many of those will be non-smokers; 85 percent of those cases will not survive past five years.

“There’s this false sense of security out there for people who don’t smoke because they think, they ignore coughs, they ignore symptoms,” said Bonnie.

In this month of international Lung Cancer Awareness, Perceptronix Medical Inc. (Perceptronix) is pleased to announce the initiation of a new, longitudinal study with the Respiratory Department of Saint Paul’s Hospital (Vancouver, Canada). Dr. Pearce Wilcox, MD, FRCP and his team will evaluate the use of LungSign(TM) in monitoring for recurrence in subjects with recently re-sected lung cancer. Recurrence rate for lung cancer after resection can be in range from 5% to 15% thus early detection of recurrence among these patients could save many lives.

” Essentially, what we do is try to extract a fingerprint of lung cancer from breath and when we identify that ,that’ll tell us ah ha, that’s the person at high risk, ” said Dr. Phillips.

The test hasn’t been approved yet by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. So details of what scientists are finding out are still very confidential.

Using the message Early Detection Saves Lives, the campaign urges you to see your doctor straight away if you have any of the following symptoms:

A cough that doesn’t go away after two to three weeks.

Worsening of a long-standing cough.

Persistent chest infections.

Coughing blood.

Unexplained persistent breathlessness.

Unexplained persistent tiredness or lack of energy.

Unexplained persistent weight-loss.

Persistent chest and/or shoulder pain.

These symptoms may not be serious, in which case you’ve nothing to lose by getting them checked out. If they are serious, you’ve got everything to gain – diagnosis at an early stage could save your life.

The Cleveland Clinic is launching a study involving cutting-edge technology that could hold a key to detecting lung cancer at an early stage when treatment is most effective. 

The three-year study, involving 8,000 patients, will analyze the effectiveness of using chest x-rays to detect abnormal changes in lung tissue caused by lung cancer in its early stage. The chest X-rays will be analyzed using computer-aided detection (CAD) software that can identify the changes.

If lung cancer is detected early enough, doctors can remove early growths in order to stop the disease. Currently, lung cancer is detected at a much later stage and treatment options are extremely limited and therefore prognosis is poor.

If you have a cough that won’t go away, feel out of breath and more tired than normal or have lost weight but don’t know why - see your doctor straight away as it could be the early signs of lung cancer.

The hoary metaphor of the war on cancer, as overused as it may be, is as evocative as ever to describe our efforts to beat the disease that will claim nearly 566,000 American lives this year alone. So let’s fall back on martial imagery to describe our current position: We now know the enemy far better than ever before. And that promises much more precise targets.

The biggest barrier to screening is patient fear and lack of understanding the value of screening, rather than cost,” says Samuel M. Lesko, M.D., MPH, director of research and medical director at the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute (NRCI), Scranton.”I don’t think cost is the primary barrier, at least for the insurance patient, the barrier is being afraid of the test itself, that it’s going to be uncomfortable - maybe even fear that they have a serious disease.Those seem to be more important barriers, as is - maybe for a few - the belief that screening doesn’t work. Perhaps people are not even aware of the option or the availability of screening tests.”

BioCurex Inc. today announced results showing that its RECAF test can detect cancer with high sensitivity and specificity using a small sample of saliva. The work was done as part of an ongoing collaboration with the Goshen Center for Cancer Care in Indiana.