This week, Bobbi Conner talks with Dr. Gerard Silvestri about research indicating that many advanced lung cancer patients never receive treatment. Dr. Silvestri is a Professor of Medicine, a lung cancer pulmonologist, and cancer researcher at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center.
TRANSCRIPT:
Conner: I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio with Health Focus here at the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. According to recent American Cancer Society funded research, many individuals with metastatic lung cancer go without treatment despite treatment breakthroughs for this condition. Doctor Gerard Silvestri is here to talk about the details of this research. Doctor Silvestri is a Professor of Medicine and a lung cancer pulmonologist and cancer researcher at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. Doctor Silvestri, tell us about this American Cancer Society funded research that you and others at MUSC were involved in looking at issues related to treatment for individuals with advanced lung cancer.
Dr. Silvestri: Doctor Adam Fox, who's also an assistant professor at Medical University of South Carolina, worked on this project over a number of years. We looked at a large database of cancer patients across the United States, 250,000 from 2006 to 2021. And the really remarkable and disturbing part of this study was we found that 50% of patients with metastatic lung cancer, which is cancer spread outside of the chest, never got treated at all for cancer, despite the fact that we've seen amazing breakthroughs in immunotherapy and targeted therapy, pill forms of therapy that could have extended their lives.
Conner: And tell us about the main important findings of this research.
Dr. Silvestri: Well, we found a few things. The first is that 40% of those patients, about 110,000, died within 90 days of being diagnosed, which either means that they had delays in their diagnosis. Some patients go to their doctor and get antibiotics for a cough and get more antibiotics, and then by the time they get a CT scan of their chest, they have advanced disease and develop symptoms. So that was one finding. Another finding was that there were certain groups that really should have seen an oncologist, (of course, as soon as you're diagnosed, you'd see an oncologist), that didn't see an oncologist. We don't exactly know why patients were not treated. And that's going to be our really, our next form of research, where we look upstream from: we just know they didn't get treated, to why they didn't get treated. And the really other important finding was this did not change significantly over time. So, while these treatments have gotten much better, the message hasn't gotten through that this isn't your grandfather's chemotherapy. Right. These are treatments that are better tolerated and have patients live significantly longer.
Conner: So, in fact there are new treatments for advanced lung cancer.
Dr. Silvestri: Absolutely. I've been at this for 30 years. And early on in my career, almost no one with cancer that spread outside the chest, that's metastatic lung cancer, lived more than a year or so. I have a significant portion of patients now, that are living more than five years with this disease. Now listen, it's not perfect. Not everyone's cured, but there are way better treatments than we used to have, and more importantly, they're better tolerated. People can live a relatively normal life with these treatments.
Conner: From your perspective, what are the important take home messages from this research?
Dr. Silvestri: The first is that all patients with metastatic lung cancer should be referred to a medical oncologist for consideration of treatment. The other thing we'd like to impart on our primary care community, if a patient comes in and they have a history of smoking cigarettes, they should be screened if they aren't being screened. And we really have to shorten the time between when the symptoms occur in a patient that might be consistent with lung cancer, and the patient has a diagnosis made, We can't wait months. We have to get this done in weeks.
Conner: Doctor Silvestri, thanks for talking with us about this important lung cancer research.
Dr. Silvestri: Thank you for having me.
Conner: From the radio studio for the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, I'm Bobbi Conner for South Carolina Public Radio.
Health Focus transcripts are intended to accurately represent the original audio version of the program; however, some discrepancies or inaccuracies may exist. The audio format serves as the official record of Health Focus programming.
