TREATMENT OVERVIEW
In cancer care, different types of doctors often work together to create a patient’s overall treatment plan that combines different types of treatments.
This is called a multidisciplinary team. Cancer care teams also include a variety of other health care professionals, including physician assistants, oncology nurses, social workers, pharmacists, counselors, dietitians, and others.
Patients should have a sense that their doctors have a coordinated plan of care and are working effectively with one another. If patients do not feel that the members of their health care team are communicating effectively with them or each other about the goals of treatment and the plan of care, patients should discuss this with their doctors or seek additional medical opinions before treatment.
There are five basic ways to treat NSCLC:
- Surgery
- Radiation therapy
- Chemotherapy
- Targeted therapy
- Immunotherapy
Each treatment option is described below, followed by an outline of common treatment plans by the stage of NSCLC. Treatment options and recommendations depend on several factors, including the type and stage of cancer, possible side effects, and the patient’s preferences and overall health.
Your care plan may also include treatment for symptoms and side effects, an important part of cancer care. Take time to learn about all of your treatment options and be sure to ask questions about things that are unclear. Also, talk about the goals of each treatment with your doctor and what you can expect while receiving the treatment.
Surgery
A surgical oncologist is a doctor who specializes in treating cancer using surgery. For lung cancer, a thoracic surgeon is specially trained to perform lung cancer surgery. The goal of surgery is the complete removal of the lung tumor and the nearby lymph nodes in the chest.
The tumor must be removed with a surrounding border or margin of healthy lung tissue. A “negative margin” means that when the pathologist examines the lung, or piece of lung that has been removed by the surgeon, no cancer was found in the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor.
The following types of surgery may be used for NSCLC:
Lobectomy. The lungs have five lobes, three in the right lung and two in the left lung. The removal of an entire lobe of the lung in a procedure called a lobectomy is currently thought to be the most effective type of surgery, even when the lung tumor is very small.
A wedge resection. If the surgeon cannot remove an entire lobe of the lung, the surgeon can remove the tumor, surrounded by a margin of healthy lung.
Segmentectomy. This is another way to remove the cancer when an entire lobe of the lung cannot be removed. In a segmentectomy, the surgeon removes the portion of the lung where the cancer developed.
Pneumonectomy. If the tumor is close to the center of the chest, the surgeon may have to remove the entire lung.
Radiofrequency ablation. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is the use of a needle inserted into the tumor to destroy the cancer with an electrical current. It is sometimes used for a lung tumor that cannot be removed with the other types of surgery listed above
