Lung Cancer Treatment - Your Ways To Survive

Only after diagnosing the type of cancer in the patient can treatment options be obtained. One time you have been detected or suspected for cancer in lungs, you will be subjected to different kind of tests to confirm the presence of lung cancer and also selected treatment protocols. X-ray, CT scans (computer assisted tomography), and MRIs (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) are the means for diagnosing this cancer.

Lung cancer treatment depends on the kind of cancer. To decide the kind of lung cancer the cell type needs to be identified. The types of cancer in lungs are little cell and non-small cell and treatment protocol for these types of cell cancers differs entirely. About 90% sufferers are identified with epidermoid carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, and oat cell carcinoma, which are the common types of lung cancers.

Your doctor will provide you all the details of cancer treatment including the stage, extent and location of the lung cancer one time you have been confirmed with lung cancer. In the early stages, the cancerous mass would be only confined to area of the lung. In the advanced stages, the cancer may spread to other parts of the body through the blood stream or lymph nodes. You may discuss together with your doctor your treatment plan, which can be performed by any of the following methods:

Radiation therapy. Treatment by passing high-energy rays on the cancerous cells to kill cancer cells.

Chemotherapy. Treatment with drug combinations to annihilate cancer cells.

Surgical procedure. Treatment by removing the part of the affected lung to eradicate the cancer.

Chemotherapy
This treatment makes use of different drug combinations given intravenously or orally. These medicines enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body destroying the cancerous cells metastasized to other parts of the body. Lung cancer treatment requires anticancer drugs for the elimination of cancer cells. Chemotherapy can be performed alone as a primary treatment or as combination with surgical procedure. Although chemotherapy kills the cancerous cells, it kills normal cells also, therefore minimizing the feasible side effects needs to be taken by the physician. The occurrence of side effects depends on the length of treatment and the amount of drugs you have taken. The common side effects of chemotherapy are nausea, vomiting, mouth sores, hair loss, or loss of appetite.

Surgical procedure
Surgical procedure may be preferred as a last resort for treatment. It might be necessary of you to spend to weeks in the hospital for surgical therapy of lung cancer. Under general anesthesia, a surgical incision is performed to the chest and the affected tissue is removed to destroy the cancer in lungs. The probable complications include wound infections, pneumonia, and excessive bleeding with surgical treatment for this cancer. For at least to months your activity ought to be limited due to the surgical incision in the ribs.

Radiation therapy
The major radiation therapies used as treatment to destroy cancer cells are outside beam radiation and brachytherapy. When the health of the patient is poor to resist surgical procedure then outside beam radiation therapy is used. Brachytherapy is the radiation therapy used for treatment by relieving the blockage of giant airways due to cancer.

Of late, an invasive procedure called video-assisted thoracic surgical procedure has been developed for a tumor smaller than four to five cm for lung cancer treatment.

Stage 4 lung cancer treatment when someone had a heart attack?

I have seen patients who have a history of heart attacks and receive radiation. I have also seen lung cancer cases where the patient was not a candidate for radiation as the area to be treated was inline with the heart.

I don’t think you are getting the correct information. Call his radiation oncologist if you can not speak to him or her right then, give a 2-3 hour window when it is best to reach you and make sure they know you are on the west coast. This type of doctor has a different type of practice that the doctors you are probably used to seeing. They have more time between patients than most doctors as their job requires them to do a lot of dictation and review a lot of scans and x-rays making it easier to return calls.