Understand your condition when you have lung cancer

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Treatment for lung cancer has been completely revolutionized over the last 5 years, radically improving results. This has happened thanks to biological therapies and immunotherapy that today extend the lives of patients by many years  and for some of them cure is possible even in the case of advanced disease.

After the biopsy confirms that  it’s really lung cancer, patients want to know how serious it is and what to do.  

CT scans and PET scan CT  allow to see if the disease is very small , in which case it is generally operated with a probability of cure from 10-20 to 60-70% depending on the site, the size and the type of cancer.  After surgery depending on the risk and type of cancer, chemotherapy or preventive immunotherapy may  be indicated because cure may be increased by  5 to 15% .

When the CT scan and PET scan show that the tumor is very large or it has spread to other organs of the body and surgery is not possible  molecular tests on the biopsy define the type of lung cancer and on this basis different therapies are started. There are  three types of classical lung cancer. A first type is treated with biologic therapy only; a second one uses immunotherapy only and a third combines chemo with immunotherapy.  and all these therapies can prolong life by many years and for some of them they can be curative.  

Biopsy also makes it possible to distinguish the second family of lung cancers called microcytoma. It is an aggressive form of cancer that can rarely be operated on and is generally treated with chemotherapy and biological drugs with much more modest results than with he classical form.