About Radiation Therapy for Lung Cancer

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. Kenneth Fink, I'm a medical oncologist at Zimmer Cancer Center at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina. Radiation therapy for lung cancer is a very important part of the treatment of lung cancer. Unfortunately, the majority of patients who are diagnosed with lung cancer cannot have their lung cancers removed. Perhaps only twenty-five percent who come in actually have a localized lung cancer, and the surgeon can be removed. Unfortunately for the other seventy-five percent their disease is a bit too advanced, but it may be that the tumor is still confined to the lung. In that case the radiation therapist is often called on to try to eradicate the lung cancer. Radiation therapy is a great innovation, it has been around for many decades, and it is what it is is that it's the same as x-ray energy. We use x-rays to take an x-ray of a person and see through their body, radiation energy when concentrated can actually be used to destroy cancer cells. Cancer cells are dividing, and they need DNA duplication, and doubling to do that to survive. And radiation energy will go right into such a cell, a cancer cell that is trying to divide, and will destroy it. It will destroy it by attacking the DNA, and by killing the cancer. Radiation therapy is very effective at doing this in lung cancer in particular it is the standard treatment for a patient with state three lung cancer. Meaning a patient whose cancer is confined to the lung, but is has involved the lymph nodes, and the surgeon can't remove it. We'll come in and have the radiation therapist treat that patient, usually combined with some chemotherapy makes the outcomes even better. Radiation therapy is pretty simple to administer, patients are usually lye down on a particular table much like an x-ray table. And their particular area or site of tumor is isolated, and the radiation energy is delivered from a painless electrical source right in the doctor's office. The whole procedure per treatment takes about a minute or so, a person has to come back usually on a daily basis to get the radiation therapy. Sometimes twice a day for certain kinds of cancer. For example, small cell lung cancer a particular rare kind of lung cancer is often treated with twice a day radiation. What happens there is the second dose of radiation is actually more toxic to the cancer cells, but less toxic to the normal surrounding tissue. So radiation therapy is a very important part if the treatment of lung cancer, a general course of it takes about four or five weeks in a row. So a person does have to set aside a little time each day, but usually after each treatment that person can go right back to work or whatever they have to do that day, and have a normal day. Towards the end of radiation therapy a person can develop some side effects they tend to get a little problem with their esophagus, they can have a little trouble swallowing, a little what we call esophagitis or radiation esophagitis. Other problems can occur, they can get a little bit of scarring or fibrous tissue or inflammatory tissue in the area. This being radiated that can usually easily treated with some steroids or some anti-inflammatory drugs. The patients generally recover pretty full from treatment with radiation. It doesn't result in any hair loss, or any other significant toxicities that you would expect with chemotherapy. So radiation therapy again a very important aspect of lung cancer therapy, and usually one of and potentially even curable. We may even see as many as twenty or twenty-five percent of patients with stage three lung cancer still alive and cancer free five years later thanks to the beneficial effects of radiation."