Lung Cancer: Causes & Treatments

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women, with the leading cause of death being prostate and breast cancer respectively. Lung cancer accounts for approximately 15 percent of all newly diagnosed cancers each year. There were more than 200,000 people diagnosed with lung cancer last year. As with other cancers, early detection and treatment are important in the prognosis of lung cancer. Understanding the causes of lung cancer and their treatments can help patients and their families make the best decisions possible.

Significance

• For the most part, lung cancer occurs primarily in older men and women, though it can occur at any age. Two out of three lung cancer diagnoses in America are in people 65 and older. Less than 3 percent of lung cancer diagnoses are in people under 45 years old.
  For men, the overall lifetime risk of developing lung cancer is about 1 in 13, while women have a lower risk at 1 in 16. The risk is factor is an average among smokers and non-smokers; however, smokers have a much higher incidence of lung cancer than non-smokers have.
  Both black and white women share compatible lung cancer risks, but black men are about 40 percent more likely to develop the disease than white men are.

Statistics

• Lung cancer is responsible for approximately 29 percent of all cancer deaths, making it the most deadly cancer of all. In 2008, there were approximately 161,000 deaths from lung cancer, which was more deaths than from breast, colon and prostate cancers combined.
  While lung cancer is one of the most serious cancers, people with lung cancer do survive. Today, there are an estimated 400,000 lung cancer survivors in America. Early detection and treatment go a long way in determining the outcome for lung cancer patients.

Types

• The cause and treatment of lung cancer depends on the type that is diagnosed. The two most common forms of lung cancer are non-small cell lung cancer and small cell lung cancer. The majority of diagnosed lung cancers are non-small cell lung cancer. It accounts for approximately 80 percent of all cancer diagnoses.
  While there are several types of non-small cell lung cancer, including those that appear in people who have never smoked, the small cell lung cancer is almost always caused by smoking and accounts for 20 percent of the lung cancers found in the United States each year.

Causes

• The American Lung Association reports that smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer in the United States today. People who smoke are 10 times more likely to develop lung cancer than people who don't smoke. Quitting smoking significantly reduces the chance of lung cancer development, and 10 years after quitting the risk is reduced to between one-third and one-half the risk of a current smoker.
  The second leading cause of lung cancer is exposure to radon gas. Radon gas can come through soil, foundations in buildings, as well as through cracks in pipes and drains. According to the ALA, 12 percent of all lung cancers are caused by exposure to radon gas. Radon gas detector kits can be purchased over the counter, or professional inspectors can check a building for evidence that it exists.

Treatment

• The treatment of lung cancer depends on whether it is non-small cell or small cell lung cancer. In addition, it depends on the stage of tumor. Lung cancer is staged between I and IV, depending on how invasive the tumor has become before the diagnosis.
  Tumors can be self-contained, have broken through the lung wall or have spread to other body organs. Once a tumor is staged and the patient's overall health is assessed, a treatment plan is designed.
  Surgery is a common first step in the treatment of lung cancer. Surgery allows the removal of part or all of the tumor. In addition, if there are many tumors or if the cancer is the type that impacts the fluid in the lung, part of the lung or the entire lung can be removed, leaving the patient with the use of the remaining lung.
  Once the surgery is complete, a treatment plan of chemotherapy and radiation is usually the next step.
  Chemotherapy and radiation have also been used to shrink inoperable tumors enough so that the patient is considered in remission and in some cases cured from lung cancer. Even when the tumors cannot be completely eradicated, a round of chemotherapy or radiation can relieve symptoms caused by lung cancer.
  For small cell lung cancer the most commonly used treatment is chemotherapy and radiation.
  Lung cancer commonly metastasizes to the brain; therefore, radiation is sometimes used on the brain in lung cancer patients even if the cancer has not yet been discovered in the brain. It is believed that it can prevent lung cancer from traveling to the brain in some cases. There are side effects from radiation on the brain, so it is important to talk with a doctor about the benefits and risks before having such treatment.

Benefits

• When small cell lung cancer has not spread outside of the cavity of the chest, there is an 80 to 90 percent response rate when treated with chemotherapy and radiation. In cases where it has spread outside of the chest cavity, the remission chances drop to 15 to 40 percent for non-small cell lung cancer and 50 to 60 percent of small cell lung cancer.
  When lung cancer does relapse, another round of chemotherapy using different drugs is usually offered for symptom relief and also offers a modest benefit of survival time.
  Relapse rates for small cell lung cancer patients who have gone into remission is usually 1 to 2 years.
  Studies have shown that for patients with non-small cell lung cancer, there may be a benefit to maintaining a preventative chemotherapy regime even after the cancer has been eradicated. It has shown some promise in preventing a relapse.