Looking into Non-Smoker’s Lung Cancer
While the vast majority of lung cancer cases are linked to tobacco, more and more non-smokers are diagnosed with this deadly disease.
“There seems to be kind of an increase over the last twenty years in lung cancers in non-smokers. We see now more women, more younger people, and more non-smokers,” says Dr. Lowell Hart, who is an oncologist on medical staff of Lee Memorial Health System.
Non-smokers are more likely to get a slower growing form of lung cancer, one with a driver mutation, compared to people who smoked.
“Cigarette smoke, tobacco smoke, has a lot of carcinogens in the smoke. So these can cause lots and lots of mutation in the lung tissue that leads to cancer. For the patients that haven’t been smokers, they more often will have a driver mutation. One gene goes bad in the lung tissue and drives the cancer,” says Dr. Hart.
As doctors get a better look at non-smoking lung cancer, they’ve identified better treatment options - therapy that identifies the precise driver and directly attacks it.
“For some of these mutations we now have good treatments that we can give without necessarily having to use chemotherapy on. We now have ways of shutting down some of those gene pathways and there’s more things coming out all the time,” says Dr. Hart.
The closer researchers look, the more variations they are finding.
“When I show a pie chart and talk about lung cancer there used to be just small cell type and non-small cell type. Nowadays they’re cutting this pie into smaller and smaller pieces so that we have more targeted treatment,” says Dr. Hart.
The end goal is to reveal solutions to make lung cancer livable.
View More Health Matters video segments at leememorial.org/healthmatters/
Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of medical care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For nearly a century, we’ve been providing our community with everything from primary care treatment to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.
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