Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer seen in people with a history of smoking. Although NSCLC is not an easy cancer to treat, advances in treatment options means more people are living longer with the disease.
Lifestyle Changes
Although changing your lifestyle will not directly treat lung cancer, it is an important part of your overall treatment plan. Since NSCLC most often occurs in smokers, if you are currently smoking, you must quit. Some people can feel devastated by their diagnosis, which can further fuel the urge to smoke or return to smoking if they quit. It is important to discuss options with your doctors to avoid relying on cigarettes to cope with your diagnosis. They might recommend nicotine replacement products and/or therapy. Seeking therapy is a useful tool to not only quit smoking, but also address any negative feelings you have regarding your diagnosis. Hopefully, you and your therapist can devise a strategy to find better behaviors that help alleviate stress and prevent you from returning to cigarettes.
Combination Treatment
A combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatments is frequently used to manage the disease. These treatments may be done instead of or in combination with surgery. Chemotherapy is helpful when doctors determine through imaging tests or a biopsy that lung cancer has begun to spread beyond the lungs. Several types of chemotherapy medications may be used to shrink the primary tumors and kill cells that have metastasized. Even if there is no evidence that cancer has spread, but there are certain indicators that lung cancer is likely to return, chemotherapy might be used proactively. Radiation treatments are good for targeting tumors with less impact to the surrounding, healthy tissue. This type of treatment might also be used to target tumors that are dangerously close to other organs so removal is safer.
Surgical Removal
Even in the early stages of lung cancer, surgery is often recommended as long as you do not have any other conditions that make surgery unsafe. Smaller tumors that are confined to certain areas of the lungs may be removed with a wedge resection. As a tumor becomes larger and is identified to be at a later stage of the disease, surgeons may need to remove a lobe of the lung to achieve clear margins. As NSCLC reaches later stages, surgery as an option becomes less likely because the tumor may consume most or all of a lung and has begun to encroach on major blood vessels and organs within the chest. In this case, other treatments, such as combination therapy, can be more appropriate to reduce the size of the mass and possibly minimize any symptoms.
Although NSCLC is a difficult disease to treat, the earlier it is found, the better the outcome. Fortunately, more people are living longer with lung cancer because of advances in treatment.
For more information on treating NSCLC, contact a lung cancer center near you.
Is your knee stiff and painful every morning when you get out of bed? Perhaps, you sometimes feel a grinding sensation in your knee. If you can relate to this frustrating situation, you might be suffering from osteoarthritis. Thankfully, several treatments are available for this joint condition. Sometimes, physicians recommend patients battling osteoarthritis of the knee take a prescription painkiller. Doctors also often encourage patients to lose weight and start a low-impact exercise program. Swimming and walking are both great forms of low-impact exercise. On this blog, I hope you will discover how to effectively and quickly relieve the painful symptoms of osteoarthritis of the knee. Enjoy!