a new treatment for lung cancer?

A study suggests a new way to fight lung cancer. “Every year, 46,300 people are diagnosed with lung cancer, making it the third most common behind prostate cancer and breast cancer”, recalls first of all on the set of 12/13, Tuesday April 12, the doctor and journalist Damien Mascret. He specifies that it is “first in terms of mortality”. Currently, the main curative treatment for lung cancer is surgery, often combined with immunotherapy or chemotherapy. “For the moment, it was only standard chemotherapy, and in this case, we had about 2.2% of the cases where we had succeeded in eliminating all the cancer cells”continues the doctor.

According to the study, adding immunotherapy before surgery can reach a rate of 24%, and reduce recurrence rates. However, not all lung cancers are concerned, since it is necessary “to be at an early stage”. However, in France, only 20 to 25% of lung cancers are diagnosed at an early stage. Damien Mascret finally reminds us that there is “two big families” lung cancers: small cell cancers, the most dangerous and less frequent, which do not respond to immunotherapy, and cancers “non-small cell” which represent 85% of cancers and for which immunotherapy can be useful.

New England Journal of Medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2202170?query=featured_home

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