Lung cancer research and awareness
Since non-small cell lung cancer is what handed me my Sandwich Generation membership card in the first place (my mother died of NSCLC last year),and I work in the area of lung cancer research, I thought this Science Daily article was interesting.
Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA led trials that compared the effectiveness of giving chemotherapy at the same time as radiation therapy versus giving radiation first, followed later by chemotherapy, to treat locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
They found that the five-year survival rate was 10.6 percent with sequential therapy, while 15.1 percent with concurrent treatment. This information is significant in that it could represent a new standard of care for patients with lung cancer.
I’m not sure someone like my mother could have tolerated both radiation and chemo at the same time, but, that’s neither here nor there. But, anything that might help in the fight against lung cancer is OK with me.
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. Lung cancer is a nasty one, folks. Many of you know first hand.
This isn’t a sermon, but, I beg you, if you smoke, find a way to quit.
Or if you continue to smoke at the bare minimum get a chest x-ray every year – that is the plea I made to a friend this week and she looked at me like I was nutso