Lung Cancer and Tumors: Summary

00:00 So to summarize the main learning points of this lecture on lung oncology. Firstly lung cancer is the commonest lethal cancer and already 10% of patients who develop lung cancer will survive.

00:15 Lung cancer needs to be suspected in anybody who is relatively elderly 50 years above especially over 65-75 years of age with new respiratory changes on an x-ray if they have been smoking in the past. The presentation of lung cancer can be in very different ways. It could be due to local invasion, metastases, paraneoplastic effects, as well as the other symptoms you might get of coughs and hemoptysis.

00:40 If somebody is presenting with what looks like it may be have lung cancer, you need to know what the histology is, whether it is a small cell or a non-small cell and for that you have to do a biopsy. You need to know what stage of disease the patient has and that will need various scans and potentially biopsies of various parts of the body depending on what may be affected by the tumour. in the end of that the reason for doing this investigation is to identify those patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma with localized disease who can be offered curative therapy in a form of surgery or perhaps radical radiotherapy if the lung function is not good enough to cope with the surgery.

01:22 Lungs are also a very common site for secondaries from other tumour almost every other type of tumours could spread the lungs and in fact lungs metastases are very common in cancer such as breast, gastrointestinal and these will cause lung masses, pleural effusions, mediastinal node involvement and radial lymphangitic carcinomatosis.

01:46 Lastly mesothelioma is a primary pleural cancer that is common in asbestos exposed patients so it's relatively common in patients who are middle aged males who worked in asbestos in the 1970s before the asbestos protection gear was routinely used for patients working in asbestos and they present with progressive pleural problems of effusion, pleural thickening, associated pain and breathlessness. And Unfortunately outcome for treatment for mesothelioma in general is poor.

02:21 And thank you for listening.