Minimally-invasive lung cancer surgery leads to quicker recovery

Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of both men and women, but new surgical options are making a difference.

Treatment for lung cancer used to mean major surgery.

Doctors would have to crack a patient’s ribs and remove a portion, or whole lobe of a lung.

But now a minimally invasive procedure is leaving more lung in place, making recovery a whole lot easier.

For New York attorney Amy Mosery and her husband it was a very unconventional vacation choice.

“Don’t ask me why, my husband and I decided to take a 40-day cross country trip back and forth from east coast to west coast in an RV," Mosery said.

But Amy says that trip saved her life. Just ten days in, a bad meal sent the couple home and to a New York emergency room.

“He came back and he said to me ‘Well, you definitely had food poisoning and I’m going to give you the IV fluids, but we really need to focus on this suspicious nodule in your lung,'" Mosery said.

The nodule was cancer. Traditional treatment for Amy would have required a large incision and removal of the cancerous lobe.

Instead, a friend referred her to Dr. Raja Flores, a thoracic surgeon at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who was using a procedure called VATS, video-assisted thoracic surgery.

“It’s a minimally invasive procedure that removes lung cancer,” Dr. Flores said.

Tiny cameras in a scope allow the doctors to visualize the lung from the inside and perform the procedure.

“We did a VATS wedge resection on her where you make three little small holes and you take out what essentially is a pizza-pie shaped portion of the lung with the tumor in the middle,” Dr. Flores said.

Amy was out of the hospital in two days and is now fully recovered. Best of all, she’s cancer-free.

“I’m definitely, most definitely, one of the lucky ones," Mosery said.

Dr. Flores also says improvements in lung cancer screening, like low dose CT scans and pet scans, allow doctors to diagnose cancer at a much earlier stage.

When caught early, Dr. Flores says greater than 80% of lung cancers can be cured.

The research summary for today's story is below:

RESEARCH SUMMARY

TOPIC: Using Video to Kill Lung Cancer

REPORT: MB #4111

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women, excluding skin cancer. About 14 percent of all new cancers cases are lung cancers and according to the American Cancer Society, there will be an estimated 224,390 new cases of lung cancer in 2016 and about 150,000 deaths from lung cancer. It is by far the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women with about 1 out of 4 cancer deaths from lung cancer. More people die of lung cancer each year than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined. Lung cancer mainly occurs in older people, with about 2 out of 3 people diagnosed with lung cancer being 65 or older. The chance that a man will develop lung cancer in his lifetime is about 1 in 14, while for a woman, the risk is about 1 in 17. These numbers include both smokers and non-smokers, but for smokers the risk is much higher.

(Source: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/lungcancer-non-smallcell/detailedguide/non-small-cell-lung-cancer-key-statistics)

TREATMENT: There are three main types of lung cancer: non-small cell lung cancer, small lung cancer and lung carcinoid tumor. The type of lung cancer is important because it affects a patient’s treatment options and prognosis. The type of surgery to treat lung cancer can include the following:

* Pneumonectomy: This surgery removes an entire lung. This might be needed if the tumor is close to the center of the chest.

* Lobectomy: The lungs are made up of 5 lobes (3 on the right and 2 on the left). In this surgery, the entire lobe containing the tumor is removed.

* Segmentectomy or wedge resection: In these surgeries, only part of a lobe is removed. This approach might be used if a person doesn’t have enough lung function to withstand removing the whole lobe.

* Sleeve resection: This operation may be used to treat some cancers in large airways in the lungs. A surgeon may be able to do this operation instead of a pneumonectomy to preserve more lung function.

Nearby lymph nodes are also removed with any of these operations to look for possible spread of the cancer. These operations are usually done through a surgical incision between the ribs in the side of the chest.

(Source: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/lungcancer-non-smallcell/detailedguide/non-small-cell-lung-cancer-treating-surgery)

NEW TECHNOLOGY: Doctors are now treating early-stage lung cancers in the outer parts of the lung with a procedure called video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). This requires smaller incisions than traditional surgery. During the operation, a thin tube with a tiny video camera is placed through a small cut in the side of the chest to help the surgeon see inside the chest. Since only small incisions are needed, there is usually less pain after the surgery and a shorter hospital stay than traditional surgery.

(Source: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/lungcancer-non-smallcell/detailedguide/non-small-cell-lung-cancer-treating-surgery)