How Many People Survive Lung Cancer?

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Dr. Kenneth Fink. I'm a medical oncologist at Zimmer Cancer Center of New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina. Survival of lung cancer is a very difficult issue. Most folks, when they hear they have lung cancer, know that there could be quite a bit of problem with surviving that. It turns out that about 25% of patients diagnosed with lung cancer are potentially curable from the standpoint of having surgery. The other 75% will not be able to have their tumor removed surgically because it's already a bit too advanced or has spread into their lymph nodes. So for the 25% who come in with a localized tumor. What we call either stage 1 or even stage 2 cancer, meaning that the tumor is confined to the lung and may have spread perhaps into a localized lymph node but hasn't spread into a distant lymph node further away from the primary tumor, those patients can undergo surgery. What happens is a surgeon can come in, remove the, remove about half the lung or what we call a lobe, can do a lobectomy, is the term we use to remove that part of the lung that contains the tumor and remove any small lymph nodes that may actually be held within that lobe. This can result in a cure in about half the patients that have that surgery. Unfortunately the other half are going to have a recurrence. So even for the 25% that we find have a confined tumor, about half of those are going to have a recurrence. For the other 75% of patients who can't have, who don't have, can't have surgery, unfortunately most of them will undergo treatment. Including very heavy treatment perhaps with radiation and chemotherapy. And perhaps 1/10th of them may have a long term survival. So for the vast majority about 70% of our cancer patients, unfortunately there will be, they will be succumbing to that and will die of their disease. Survival rate has gone up however. Although 70% may be, may have lost their life to lung cancer by about 5 years. There are still, that number has improved considerably. People are living, even with metastatic lung cancer, for a year or two. We are at a point right now where about half of our metastatic lung cancer patients are alive one year after being told that their cancer has already spread to other parts of the body. That's much better than in the years before where only 10 of 20 percent may have been alive at the one year point. Overall our survival rates have doubled in the last several decades. So while still a very difficult disease to have and a tough one especially if your cancer is not surgically removable survival of lung cancer has improved considerably with many of the modern treatments that we now have to offer."