Hope for cancer patients

A Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher has helped provide an answer to the debate about whether patients with a certain type of advanced lung cancer would benefit from surgery.

In a major study published in The Lancet, lead author Kathy Albain, MD, a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Stritch, and colleagues found that surgery after standard chemotherapy and radiation can be an option for patients.

Surgery significantly prolongs survival without progression of the lung cancer, but does not dramatically improve overall survival compared to a control group treated with conventional chemotherapy and radiation alone.

The patients who did appear to have a major benefit from surgery were those in whom a section of the lung (lobe) was removed, rather than the entire lung. Dr. Albain is a lung and breast cancer specialist at Loyola University Health System's Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center.

“This the first study conducted in this group of patients where the only difference in the two groups of patients was the use of surgery,” Dr. Albain said.

In an accompanying editorial, German researcher Wilfried Eberhardt, MD, and colleagues wrote that as a result of the new study, “We now have clear arguments in favor of surgery in well-selected patient subsets.”