Steps to Take After a Lung Cancer Diagnosis
- Empower yourself with knowledge
- If you smoke, stop
- Choose a doctor that’s right for you
- Understand your treatment options
First, “Get appropriate radiographic studies to evaluate what the extent of the disease is,” Dr. Edward Garon, a medical oncology and hematology specialist at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, told SurvivorNet. “Because, based on that, some patients are potentially candidates for local treatment such as surgery, whereas other patients will have disease that has spread outside the chest and will need to look for systemic therapy.”
Read MoreIf You Smoke, Stop
Smoking is the most common cause of lung cancer in the U.S. But there’s good news for smokers who have already been diagnosed: It’s never too late to make a positive difference in your health by quitting. A 2010 study published in the British Medical Journal, cited by the CO2 Foundation, reported that people diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer who quit smoking can double their chances of survival over five years, compared with people who continue to smoke. Quitting smoking also substantially decreases your risk for other diseases as well, like heart disease and stroke.Does Smoking Marijuana Cause Lung Cancer?
“There is data that patients who have been smokers, who continue to smoke, don’t do as well as patients who stop smoking,” Dr. Garon says. “The other thing that I always advise patients to do is to maintain their activity level and also to maintain their diet.”
We know it’s not easy to quit smoking far from it. But nicotine replacement products approximately double the success rate for those trying to quit without increasing the risk of cancer, the CO2 Foundation notes.
Lung Cancer in Smokers vs. Non-Smokers
If You Don’t Smoke, Learn Your Options
One-fifth of men and half of women with lung cancer were never smokers, and if you fall into this category, know that your treatment options may be different.
The DNA of your tumor, which often correlates with whether or not you’re a smoker, can help doctors determine the right treatment options for you. For example, people who have EGFR-positive lung cancer may respond to drugs that target that specific gene. Others who have the ALK gene mutation may take a targeted medication that blocks that gene's activity. Non-smokers respond better to targeted drugs.
Choose a Doctor
There are several types of surgery for lung cancer, and the type of surgery will depend on the specific location of the cancer, its size, and whether it has started to spread.
When you’re choosing a surgeon, you’ll want to ask the right questions. But Dr. Jay Shah, a urologic oncologist at Stanford Medicine, told SurvivorNet that experience level isn’t necessarily the only answer that matters. While, of course, experience is important in a surgeon, volume is not necessarily the best indicator of the right surgeon for you. Overall, Dr. Shah recommends choosing someone whom you have favorable intuition about and feel you can trust.
What to Know About Immunotherapy
A new class of immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors offers encouraging news for people with certain types of lung cancer, called nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer. A major clinical trial found that certain patients with this subtype of cancer could benefit from taking a type of checkpoint inhibitor called pembrolizumab (brand name: Keytruda) on its own. This was a big development because the news showed that the drug had a survival benefit even without being combined with chemotherapy. Follow-up analysis showed that even more patients could benefit from Keytruda than was previously thought.
Related: Keytruda is Not for EveryoneImmunotherapy Needs to be Tailored
What Do People With Lung Cancer Need to Know About COVID-19?
So as you empower yourself with research, work with your doctor to find the right path on your individual lung cancer journey. You do have options, and starting to explore them now is a key first step.
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