New Tumor Staging System Means More Operable Lung Cancer

In lung cancer patients, there is a decades-old method that has been used to predict survival and help determine whether a lung cancer patient will have surgery, chemotherapy or be treated at all.

Now, there is a big overhaul of that old method that will allow for a formula called tumour staging –which is based on a tumour’s size, how far it has spread and other factors to predict a patient’s survival odds and to guide treatment.

Under the new system -which classifies many tumours as more treatable than in the past – means more surgery or other aggressive therapy can be offered to thousand more lung cancer patients each year.

The current system was developed from about 5,000 tumour samples from University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston decades ago – before improved scanning technology was available to evaluate a cancer’s spread.

The new plan is based on 100,000 tumour samples from around the world including Asia, where lung cancer rates are projected to climb because of trends in smoking, unhealthy lifestyles and aging populations.

According to Dr. Joan Schiller, a lung cancer specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas:

“By changing some of these groupings, some patients will get moved to an earlier stage of disease for which we tend to be more aggressive in treatment.

Before, a patient may have only been offered chemotherapy. They may now be offered chemotherapy and radiation or more intense radiation. In some cases, patients were getting inappropriately aggressive treatment.

Some people with very small tumours may get away with less therapy – taking out just a segment of lung instead of an entire lobe.”

The new guidance is to be presented at a conference of lung cancer specialists in Seoul, South Korea this weekend and is expected to be adopted by policy-making groups in the next year.

Find more details from Canadian Press.