More lung cancer patients may be offered surgery
Reported August 31, 2007
Thousands more lung cancer patients each year could be offered surgery or other aggressive therapy under a new system that classifies many tumors as more treatable than in the past.
It is the first big overhaul of a decades-old method used to predict survival and help determine whether a lung cancer patient will have surgery, chemotherapy or be treated at all.
The new guidelines are to be presented at a lung cancer conference in Seoul, South Korea, that starts today. Policy-making groups are expected to adopt it in the next year.
Lung cancer is the world’s top cancer killer, claiming 1.3 million lives each year. In the United States, 213,380 new cases and 160,390 deaths from the disease are expected this year.
Nearly 60 percent of people die within one year of diagnosis, and nearly 75 percent die within two years, American Cancer Society statistics show.
In treating it, doctors use a formula called tumor staging. It is based on a tumor’s size, how far it has spread and other factors to predict survival odds and to guide treatment.
The current system was developed from about 5,000 tumor samples from University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston decades ago before improved scanning technology was available to evaluate a cancer’s spread.
The new plan is based on 100,000 tumor samples from around the world including Asia, where lung cancer rates are projected to climb because of trends in smoking, unhealthy lifestyles and aging populations.
It keeps four broad groupings but sorts people more precisely based on refined understanding of tumor characteristics.