Non-small-cell lung cancer usually diagnosed in the form of a tumor develops over the years and is diagnosed at stage 1 or stage 2 when some symptoms appear. It can be treated with surgery that removes cancer along with lung tissues and lymph nodes. After surgery, you need to stay in hospital for some days until wounds heal.
After a month, your doctor calls you to check remaining cancer cells and kill those cells with radiotherapy in combination with chemotherapy.
Surgery is not suitable for some patients especially smokers that have heart problem along with lung cancer. Stereotactic radiosurgery and radiofrequency ablation along with chemotherapy are used to treat lung cancer in these patients.
To control the growth factor receptor (afatinib (Gilotrif), amivantamab-vmiw (Rybrevant), dacomitinib (Vizimpro), erlotinib (Tarceva), necitumumab (Portrazza) and osimertinib (Tagrisso) are used.
To block the blood supply to the tumor, bevacizumab (Avastin) and ramucirumab (Cyramza) show significant improvement in cancer patients.
It is also necessary to boost the immunity of patients, with the help of Atezolizumab (Tecentriq), durvalumab (Imfinzi), nivolumab (Opdivo), and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) medicines every 2 – 3 weeks that fight cancer cells as well.
Metastatic lung cancer
Metastasized is cancer that spreads to other organs of the body. It isn’t easy to cure. However, radiotherapy or chemotherapy and some medicines like Gefitinib (Iressa) are used to provide comfort, lessen pain, and prolong life. These treatments shrink the size of the tumor and relieve pain.
Gene rearrangement determines the sequences in which the genes are joined as the DNA of the immunoglobulin-producing cell matures. Your doctor may prescribe medicines like alectinib (Alecensa), brigatinib (Alunbrig), ceritinib (Zykadia), crizotinib (Xalkori), and lorlatinib (Lorbrena) to treat some proteins in tumors that have changed in the BRAF gene.
Care after Treatment
These treatments may have side effects, such as constipation, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, or pain. Palliative care is used to treat the after-effects of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and medication. Your doctors may use supportive medicines to relieve these symptoms.
Smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke are the two leading causes of lung cancer. A person can live five years on average after diagnosis of lung cancer. The key to increasing the survival rate is to catch cancer in its early stages.