Lung Cancer Treatment

Lung cancer treatment is becoming more common now:

• radiation therapy
• surgery
• drugs
• used singly or together.

More treatments are being developed all the time.

Your doctor will make recommendations for specific treatments based on the stage of your cancer, and those recommendations may be updated with new drugs as they come to market, or go into clinical trials.

On this page, we're going to give a short overview of lung cancer treatments. Most of the treatments for lung cancer are lung cancer chemotherapy related or surgical. Because of when it's typically discovered, lung cancer radiation therapy is usually used as a follow on procedure. All of our explanations on this page are very brief, and we try to be nontechnical, but can't always.

If you are undergoing lung cancer treatment, please think about contributing to this web site. We want to build a community of lung cancer patients and survivors to help others understand this disease and how to fight it. You can submit your story in the web form on this page, and we take anonymous submissions.

Surgery

Most lung cancer surgery is used to remove large cell tumors. Because of how rich the lungs are with blood vessels, many lung cancer surgeries have to be repeated multiple times to keep the disease from coming back.

Many of the surgical techniques are laparoscopic, which means that a small probe is inserted through an incision and then guided to the tumor by a camera. This means the procedure causes less pain and has fewer complications.

Chemotherapy for lung cancer

Lung cancer chemotherapy is the main method of treating lung cancer, because it will attack the cancer cells no matter where they are in the body. There are a number of frequently used cancer drugs, and plenty more in development or in clinical trials.

Chemotherapy has side effects, and choosing the right cancer drugs is often a case of balancing treatment with the side effects expected. There are also drugs to reduce the side effects and make the experience less miserable.

Radiation

One of the exciting areas where lung cancer treatment has really evolved is with radiation therapy. Routine medicine today was science fiction ten years ago; radiation therapy tries to hit cancer cells with electrons or neutrons or photons that scramble the DNA of the cancer cells keeping them from reproducing. It's used as a follow on for lung cancer treatment in most cases, or for treatments that are hard to get to surgically.

One of the exciting areas where lung cancer treatment has really evolved is with radiation therapy.

Experimental drug treatments for lung cancer

There are many new experimental drug treatments available if your regular treatments for lung cancer are not helping you get better; this is all part of the program to develop lung cancer cures. Many of these might not be available through your regular doctor but she probably knows about experimental clinical trials. You can learn about those drugs and many others on the drug treatment page.

Alternative treatments that are not mainstream medicine

Some of these lung cancer treatment options are said to work for some people. But few statistics are available to back up these claims. Because many alternative treatments are given by clinics outside of the United States, the US FDA is unable to get reliable reports of positive results. We have searched for reviews of these treatments so you can learn something about them for yourself. We will write about them so you can learn if they might help you.

Nutrition and whole body support

Your chance of beating cancer is much better when you have stronger overall health. There is NO question about this, and that means eating healthier, taking vitamins and getting enough exercise. You'll also need to focus on things that reduce stress in your life, and do things that you enjoy that boost your morale. The morale is to the physical at three to one; this maxim from Napoleon also applies to cancer survival rates.

There are more pages filled with lung cancer treatment information, so take your time reading these extra pages.

You can also write to us about any question that you don't see answered in this website and we will do our best to answer you.

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Related Pages

Radiation Therapy for Lung Cancer - Information about radiation therapy for lung cancer Alternative Treatments for Lung Cancer - Alternative treatments for lung cancer are constantly being sought after.