What treatments are available for lung cancer?
If you have lung cancer, your treatment choices may include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or targeted therapy. More than one kind of treatment may be used, depending on the stage of your cancer. Surgery is usually recommended (often along with other treatments) for early stage lung cancers. If surgery can be done, it gives the best chance of curing NSCLC. Many different operations can be used to treat (and maybe cure) non-small cell lung cancer: • pneumonectomy (new-mo-nek-tuh-me): the entire lung is removed in this surgery. • lobectomy (lobe-ek-tuh-me): a section (lobe) of the lung is removed in this surgery. • segmentectomy (seg-men-tek-tuh-me) or wedge resection: part of a lobe is removed in this surgery. With any of these operations, lymph nodes are also removed to look for possible spread of the cancer. Radiation therapy is treatment with high-energy rays (such as x-rays) to kill or shrink cancer cells. The radiation may come from outside the body (external radiation)
