Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in the United States, taking more than 130,000 lives in 2021. Someone is diagnosed with lung cancer every two and a half minutes, roughly 646 people per day. The symptoms of lung cancer—cough, shortness of breath, hemoptysis, pallor, and fatigue —are often insidious and non-specific, so they are easily confused with other medical conditions. Treatment involves a multidisciplinary team, including: Primary healthcare provider Pulmonary, medical and radiation oncologists Nurses and physician's assistants who specialize in lung cancer Pulmonologist Thoracic surgeon Psychologist Solskin / Getty Images Initial Assessment of Lung Cancer (With Your Healthcare Provider) Lung cancer is often insidious—producing no symptoms until the disease is in its advanced stages. This underscores the importance of routine check-ins with a healthcare provider, especially if you are at...

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) makes up about 80% to 85% of lung cancers. It's one of the two main categories of lung cancer along with small cell lung cancer (SCLC). The survival rate for people with lung cancer is highest when it's caught in the early stages, but it's estimated that about 40% of lung cancers have spread to distant organs at the time of diagnosis. The spread of cancer to distant body parts is known as metastasis. NSCLC can spread to almost any part of your body, but it most commonly spreads to bone. Studies have found lung cancer to be one of the most common causes of bone metastases. Cancer that has spread to bone often has a poor outlook and generally isn't considered curable. In this article, we take a closer look at bone metastasis in NSCLC, including symptoms and how it affects treatment and outlook. Bone metastasis is the spread of cancer to bone tissue from another organ. Metastatic NSCLC is also referred to as stage 4 NSCLC. It's es...

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer. While it only accounts for about 1% of all skin cancers, melanoma causes the most skin cancer deaths. Researchers estimate that 99,780 adults in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive melanoma in 2022. About 7,650 are expected to die from it. If melanoma is found and treated early, the prognosis is favorable. Newer treatments are helping people with advanced forms of the disease live longer. This article will highlight important facts and statistics you should know about melanoma.   Zinkevych / Getty Images Melanoma Overview Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that happens when cells that give skin its pigment, called melanocytes, grow out of control.  This cancer can develop anywhere on the skin, but it's more likely to crop up on women's legs and the chest and back of men. Other common sites include the neck and face. Spotting Melanomas Me...

There are several reasons you may be feeling pain in and around the back of your lungs. This pain may be due to injuries or disturbances in the lining of your lungs (the pleura) or the bones and muscles surrounding the organs. Persistent coughs can even cause back pain in the back of your lungs. However, your lungs have very few pain receptors, and people often refer to more general chest pains as lung pains. Lung cancer Back pain can accompany certain types of cancer, including lung cancer. According to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, about 25 percent of people with lung cancer experience back pain. In fact, back pain is frequently the first lung cancer symptom that people notice before diagnosis. Back pain may also arise as a side effect of cancer treatment. If you're concerned that your back pain could be a symptom of lung cancer, consider whether you have other common symptoms of lung cancer, such as: Injury Lung pain in your back may also be the result of an injury. Physical...

What is common for Ben Stiller, John Kerry, Rod Stewart, Robert De-Niro, Warren Buffett, Gadi Eizenkot, and Ehud Olmert? They all were diagnosed with prostate cancer and shared their experience dealing with the disease. If you have been diagnosed with prostate cancer, or if you are living with the side effects of prostate cancer treatment, you are not alone. Numerous men all around the world are diagnosed with this common cancer, which affects about one in nine men. Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer diagnosed in men, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men, after lung cancer, with more than 1.4 million men diagnosed yearly globally. 1 View gallery Itay Barnea is the CEO of BioProtect ( Photo: BioProtect ) However, is this a real disease that eventually will find any man that will live enough years? Or do we just test too many men without any real need? Screening for prostate cancer is a long-time contentious issue in debate. Should healthy men, with no ...

Long-term survival was equivalent for patients with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whether treated with stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) or surgery, according to updated results from a prospective study. In an analysis of an additional 80 patients with medically operable, stage IA NSCLC treated with SABR, the overall survival (OS) rate was 91% at 3 years and 87% at 5 years, reported Joe Chang, MD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology . In comparison, OS following video-assisted thoracoscopic surgical lobectomy with mediastinal lymph node dissection (VATS L-MLND) in a similar cohort of early-stage NSCLC patients was again 91% at 3 years and 84% at 5 years. Progression-free survival (PFS) rates at 3 years were also similar between the two groups, at 80% for the SABR-treated patients and 88% for the surgically treated patients. At 5 years, these rates were 77% and 80%, respectively. "Long-term results of this ...

Merck's KEYTRUDA® (pembrolizumab) Receives Four New Approvals in Japan, Including in High-Risk Early-Stage Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) September 27, 2022 6:45 am ET KEYTRUDA now approved for 23 uses in 13 different types of cancer in Japan RAHWAY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada, today announced that KEYTRUDA, Merck's anti-PD-1 therapy, received four new approvals from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW): KEYTRUDA in combination with chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment, and then contin...