[Lung cancer and intensive care: which patient how long?]

Lung cancer still remains the leading cause of cancer death among all the cancer types. Early diagnosis is the most important factor for efficient treatment and disease management. Nowadays, several new methodologies are being used in clinical practise for diagnosis, staging and treatment of disease. Therefore, survival is prolonged even in patients who are not eligible for surgery. This has led to increase in the acceptance of lung cancer patients in intensive care units (ICU) due to both the disease and the treatments applied and also due to the comorbidity of the patients. However, it is unclear which lung cancer patient will benefit from intensive treatment. In this review, we shared the ICU admission reasons and prognosis of the early stage and advanced stage lung cancer patients and when these patients were referred to ICU and treatment modalities in ICU were discussed.