One in every 13 men and on in every 16 women is projected to develop lung cancer. Usually this occurs after the age of 45 according to the American Cancer Society. Most (80 to 90 percent) lung cancers belong to the non-small cell lung cancer category. The other category of lung cancer is small cell lung cancer.
Size
Lung cancer can be treated and, if it is caught in the earliest stages, may be cured. However, three out of five people who are diagnosed with the disease die within a year. In 2008 alone, there were 215,020 U.S. patients diagnosed with new cases of lung cancer in the United States, and 161,840 died of lung cancer.
Features
Surgery gives lung cancer patients the best chance for survival. Depending on the location, size and the extent to which the lung cancer has spread, there are three surgical options. A pneumonectomy removes an entire lung. A lobectomy removes one lobe from a lung, and a wedge resection removes just a small part of a lung. Whenever a patient undergoes surgery for lung cancer, the doctor will remove some lymph nodes for the laboratory to determine if the cancer has spread.
Identification
Radiation is another treatment option for lung cancer. Usually external radiation is preferred, but sometimes brachytherapy is chosen. This treatment inserts the radioactive material directly into the tumor.
Types
Small lung cancers can sometimes be destroyed using radio frequency ablation, photodynamic therapy or chemotherapy. These treatments occasionally are combined with surgery or radiation. Lung cancer also responds well, when caught in the early stages, to some new drugs such as Avastin, Tarcera and Eribitux.
Warning
In 2004, $9.6 billion was spent on the treatment of lung cancer in the United States and in 2007, the National Cancer Institute reported that $226.9 million was used to fund research to find cures for the disease. Since 90 percent of cases of this leading cause of death in the United States were due to smoking, public education efforts to prevent smoking are truly matters of life and death.