Now, keep up to date
with daily feeds of newly posted stories
about America's Seniors...click on the box
to the left
Surgery remains an option for advanced Lung
Cancer
Newswise — In recent years, oncologists have debated
whether patients with a certain type of
advanced lung cancer would benefit from
surgery.
Now a major study published in the journal The Lancet
has found that surgery after standard
chemotherapy and radiation can be an option
for patients.
Surgery significantly prolongs survival without progression
of the lung cancer, but does not
dramatically improve overall survival
compared to a control group treated with
conventional chemotherapy and radiation
alone.
The patients who did appear to have a major benefit from
surgery were those in whom a section of the
lung (lobe) was removed, rather than the
entire lung, lead author Dr. Kathy Albain
and colleagues reported.
Albain is a lung and breast cancer specialist at Loyola
University Health System's Cardinal
Bernardin Cancer Center.
"This the first study conducted in this group of patients
where the only difference in the two groups
of patients was the use of surgery," Albain
said.
In an accompanying editorial, German researcher Dr.
Wilfried Eberhardt and colleagues wrote that
as a result of the new study, "We now have
clear arguments in favor of surgery in
well-selected patient subsets."
The study included patients with non-small cell cancer,
which accounts for about 80 percent of all
lung cancers.
Patients had stage 3 cancer, in which the cancer had spread
to lymph nodes in the center of the chest.
This type of stage 3 cancer accounts for about 30 percent
of all non-small cell lung cancer cases.
Patients were treated at multiple academic and community
hospitals in the United States and Canada.
One group of 202 patients was randomly assigned to receive
surgery plus chemotherapy and radiation,
while a second group of 194 patients
received just chemotherapy and radiation.
Median overall survival was similar between the two groups:
23.6 months in the surgery group and 22.2
months in the non-surgery group.
After five years, 37 patients in the surgical group and 24
patients in the non-surgery group were still
alive.
The median length of time it took before the cancer began to
progress again after treatment was 12.8
months in the surgery group and 10.5 months
in the non-surgery group.
"Another important finding of our study is that both groups
of patients lived longer than previously
reporter for this stage of the disease,"
Albain said.
"This highlights the importance of multidisciplinary
evaluation and treatment -- which all
patients deserve."
Albain is a professor in the Department of Medicine,
Division of Hematology/Oncology, Loyola
University Chicago Stritch School of
Medicine.
Based in the western suburbs of Chicago, Loyola University
Health System is a quaternary care system
with a 61-acre main medical center campus,
the 36-acre Gottlieb Memorial Hospital
campus and 25 primary and specialty care
facilities in Cook, Will and DuPage
counties.
The medical center campus is conveniently located in
Maywood, 13 miles west of the Chicago Loop
and 8 miles east of Oak Brook, Ill. The
heart of the medical center campus, Loyola
University Hospital, is a 570-licensed bed
facility.
It houses a Level 1 Trauma Center, a Burn Center and the
Ronald McDonald® Children’s Hospital of
Loyola University Medical Center. Also on
campus are the Cardinal Bernardin Cancer
Center, Loyola Outpatient Center, Center for
Heart & Vascular Medicine and Loyola Oral
Health Center as well as the LUC Stritch
School of Medicine, the LUC Marcella Niehoff
School of Nursing and the Loyola Center for
Health & Fitness.
... ..
...
...