Mainly, there are three types of treatment and its use will depend on the type of lung cancer and the stage where you are.
If you are in an early stage can remove the tumor quirúrgicamente.Ahora if it has already spread is used to radiotherapy (high energy X rays) or a combination thereof and chemotherapy (drugs effective against cancer cells).
Treatment is essential because a patient with untreated lung cancer has an average survival of six months.
Stage 0
At this stage do not require chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Surgery may completely remove the cancer. The type of surgery is a segmentectomy, ie the removal of a lung wedge.
Stage I
Segmentectomy is generally used for smaller tumors or for patients with worse physical condition, or lobectomy to remove the tumor.
The effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy, is being tested in clinical trials. Although micrometastases is useful for those that have not been identified and have not been removed by surgery.
If the tumor is at the edge of the lung tissue probably not have removed all the cancer cells, so radiation therapy is recommended.
Radiation therapy can be used as primary treatment if the patient, general condition, can not undergo surgery. The survival rate after five years in this stage is 65%.
Stage II
Used surgery: segmentectomy or lobectomy.
Radiation therapy can be used after surgery to ensure that it is not any cancer cells. It can also be used as primary therapy in those patients who can not be operated on by health problems. Chemotherapy may be used after surgery or radiotherapy.
The survival rate for patients who are in this stage of cancer is 40%.
Radiation therapy uses high energy X-radiation to destroy cancer cells. It uses a device called a linear accelerator that sends rays to the affected area only.
This lung cancer treatment is used sometimes as a primary or principal in patients who can not undergo surgery. In this case, is not to cure but slow the progression of the disease, although some exceptional cases come to heal without surgery, radiation therapy alone.
Radiation therapy to the lung is often used to relieve an airway obstruction leading to cancer.
When radiotherapy is used as a secondary treatment after surgery is primarily used to destroy cells that have not been removed.
Another use for which radiotherapy is used to relieve cancer-causing symptoms such as pain, difficulty swallowing, and so on.
Treatment for these patients consist of a combination of several techniques that are surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Each of them will be more effective than the other depending on the type of cancer and the stage where they are. In fact, treatment depends on four factors: the type and extent of spread of the tumor, the patient’s health status and functional status of the various body systems (heart, liver, kidney, neurological, etc.)..
Lung cancer surgery is the treatment modality most likely to be curative, therefore, is resorted to if all of the cancer can not be removed and respiratory status of the patient to tolerate the removal of the portion of lung to be removed.
Small cell lung cancers are very rarely operate, since it is almost always diagnosed extensive stage when only limited is operable. Approximately half of non-small lung cancers can be removed due to its extension. It is therefore essential that there are no lymph metastasis and central area of the chest (mediastinum) are free of tumor and the tumor has not invaded ineradicable structures as the trachea, the aorta or the pleura.
You can remove only a small portion of the lung, if the tumor is very localized, to be called wedge resection or segmentectomy.
If you removed a lobe of the lung is called lobectomy.
If you remove the entire lung, it is called pneumonectomy.
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