Lung cancer is the second most common cancer for both men and women in the U.S. That’s according to the American Cancer Society. This Lung Cancer Awareness Month, what do you need to know about the disease? Benjamin Solomon, MD, Avera Medical Group medical oncologist, explains risk factors and how you can stay on top of your health.
Who is at risk for lung cancer?
We all are at some risk for lung cancer as we get older, but the most important risk factor for lung cancer is smoking. Other exposure risks would include home radon or other radon exposures in a work setting.
If you’ve never smoked, are there other factors that can result in a lung cancer diagnosis?
Sometimes the exposure is unclear so as we get older, the risk does go up, regardless of smoking exposure and some of those may not be identifiable, but radon exposure over long stretches of time has been associated with increased risk of lung cancer as well.
What are treatment options?
It depends on the stage at which the lung cancer is detected. Stage refers to how far the cancer has spread, to what areas of the body it might have spread. If a lung cancer is detected early then our preferred approach for a very fit patient may be surgery and possibly some chemotherapy or other therapies surrounding surgery. Some patients may also be a candidate for radiation for earlier stage lung cancer. The lung cancers that are detected at a later stage, where it may have spread to other areas of the body, typically we manage with chemotherapy, immunotherapy and targeted drugs, which are newer, specific technologies that we use for treatments of lung cancer.
What is a lung cancer screening?
A lung cancer screening is a yearly CT scan, that’s a low dose CT scan, so not as much radiation exposure as a standard CT scan, done once a year to screen for lung cancer in at-risk individuals, and that is specifically patients who have roughly an equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes for 20 years or perhaps a half pack of cigarettes for 40 years.
