Treatments for Lung Cancer

There are some type of treatment are available for the lung cancer patients. There are two type of lung cancer; they are non-small cell cancer and small cell cancer. These two types of lung cancer can have different treatment.  The first treatment surgery, this surgery is the surgical removal of the tumor and it is generally performed for limited-stage. This tumor is an abnormal mass of tissue, this is also known as cancer cell. This surgical removal of tumor is for the non-small cell cancer patients only which are stage 1 and sometimes stage two only; this surgical removal is for the cancer cell that has not spread beyond the lung. About 35% of lung cancer can be removal surgically , but this operation does not mean that it is 100% result is cure , although the tumor have been remove it can already spread and the cancer cell can be recur at a later time . More that 35% of lung cancer patients that have slow growing lung cancer after surgical removal can still alive five years after diagnosis. Beside that, this surgical removal of tumor nay not is possible for the patients that have some serious conditions, because in this operation they might have a limit ability to survive. This surgery is often too performed with the small cell cancer patients rather than the non-small cell cancer patients.

Besides that, radiation is one of the treatments for lung cancer. This treatment is suitable for both NSCLC and SCLC. This radiation therapy is the uses of high energy X-ray or other types of radiation to kill the cancer cell. This radiation therapy is a direct radiation toward and to kill the cancer cell. Radiation is also for the patients that are refuses to do surgical removal, if the tumor has spread to areas that are the serious part that the surgical removal is impossible. Thus, radiation therapy is generally only to minimize the tumor or is just to limit the growth of the cancer cell only. It is one of the ways to increase the survival rate. This radiation therapy can carry out on an outpatient basis; this is for external radiation only. For internal radiation the patient must be hospitalize. For those patients that has severe lung disease and with a lung cancer they are not recommended to have radiation therapy, this is because the radiation can further decrease the function of the lung. This radiation therapy is with the help of brachytherapy, it is something that use a small pellet of radioactive material placed directly into the cancer. This radiation therapy may not cause any risks when doing it, but it may cause some of the side effect such as nausea, vomiting or diarrhea.

The third treatment to treat lung cancer would be chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is referring to the administration of anticancer drugs to stop or to control the growth of cancer cell. These drugs enter the bloodstream and can affect cancer cell all over the body. This treatment can be given to both NSCLC AND SCLC patients. Very little patients who have SCLC can survive more than four month , and with this chemotherapy the survival time of the patients will be longer than the patient that without chemotherapy . Chemotherapy alone is not particularly effective in treating NSCLC, but it is combining with other therapy it may be able to prolong the survival time.  Chemotherapy is actually a pill. There are many combinations of drugs to kill the cancer cell, this call cycles, over a period of weeks to month, with break in between cycles. Unluckily, the drugs that used to kill cancer cell will also kill the normal dividing cell in the body. By using this kind of treatment can also cause many of the side effect, such as damage of blood cell, weight loss, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and mouth sores.

Another treatment for the lung cancer would be targeted therapy. This therapy is using the some target drugs to kill the cancer cell. This is targeted drugs, some of the example would be erlotinib and gefitnib, these two drugs is also for the patients that are already immune to the chemotherapy. One of the good thing of the treatment would be chemotherapy will kill the cancer cell and the normal cell in the body, but this targeted drugs will be in less damage to the normal cell compare to chemotherapy. 

Lists Antibodies and Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors Currently under Clinical Investigation for Lung Cancer.