Progress in lung cancer: non-oat cell (non-small cell lung cancer)

Lung cancer remains the greatest killing cancer in the United States with 149,000 new cases expected in 1987. The present expected mortality rate is 87 per cent. More women in the United States died of lung cancer than breast cancer in 1986. Asymptomatic, early and curable lung cancer in high risk individuals is usually found by routine chest X-ray. So-called Stage I lung cancer was reported to have a 83 per cent survival rate at three years by Martini and Beattie in 1977 and 70 per cent five year survival rate subsequently. When the more than 30,000 volunteer males were enrolled in the National Cancer Institute, national lung program for screening, 223 unsuspected lung cancers were found. 47 per cent were Stage I with a survival rate at five years of over 76 per cent. The PMI-Strang/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center study found 53 cancers in its first screen and 235 lung cancers over the next eight years of the study. Forty per cent were Stage I with a five year survival rate of 70 per cent. Sputum cytology as compared to chest X-ray was of little additional value. Studies (Martini) of Nl lung cancer was found to have a 49 per cent survival rate following resection. The N2 group of lung cancers where the mediastinal tumor was surgically removable and followed by external radiation therapy had a 27 per cent survival rate at five years. Those tumors with solitary brain metastases where the solitary brain metastasis could be resected and the primary tumor controlled, gave a 27 per cent survival rate at six years. The group of advanced N2 disease where the mediastinum could not be completely cleared were a serious group of cancers. A study of 100 patients treated from 1977 to 1980 with surgery plus internal radiotherapy followed by external radiotherapy had an overall 22 per cent survival rate for four to eight years with most of the deaths occurring because of metastases outside the chest. More recently chemotherapy has been used pre-operatively for those individuals with advanced lung cancer in the chest then followed by a combination of surgery, internal radiotherapy, external radiotherapy and more chemotherapy, if chemotherapy sensitive. This is the so-called multidisciplinary approach. In our present early studies it seems that those so treated who are chemotherapy sensitive have a 44 per cent, two year survival rate in a group of patients considered to have extremely poor prognosis.