Lung Cancer Lung Cancer Basics

Peter Jennings Dies of Lung Cancer: Understanding the Disease

Peter Jennings, the former anchor of ABC News' "World News Tonight," died August 7, 2005, five months after being diagnosed with lung cancer. His death highlights just how common and serious a disease lung cancer is: More than 80,000 cases of lung cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year.

Patients and doctors have had few advances in lung cancer treatment to celebrate. Recently, however, some headway has been made in the treatment of non—small cell lung cancer. This is the type of lung cancer that affects most people, though it is not known what type of lung cancer Peter Jennings had. Today, chemotherapy is an option for more patients, and some patients are receiving new, targeted therapies—such as the recently approved Tarveca—which are designed to zero in on cancer cells.

Survival rates for lung cancer are still low compared to those for other common cancers, such as colon cancer and breast cancer, largely because it is diagnosed in its late stages. The best approach is prevention, and quitting smoking can reduce risk of lung cancer and other lung conditions, though factors such as the number of years you smoked, the age at which you became a smoker and whether you already had an illness when you quit, all play a role in risk.

Oncologists say there is room for optimism about treatment as well. Below, Joan Schiller, MD, a medical oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, offers an overview of treatment for non—small cell lung cancer.

What are of the common types of lung cancer?
There are four major types. However, three of them act so much the same that we tend to call them by one name, and that name is non—small cell lung cancer. The three subtypes under non—small cell lung cancer are adenocarcinoma, large cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. The fourth type is called small cell lung cancer, which is more rare but tends to grow and spread more quickly than the other three types. It's also more responsive to chemotherapy. The theory is that most of the chemotherapy that we use works best on cells that are rapidly dividing. And since this is such a fast-growing cancer, cells are dividing particularly quickly, so the chemotherapy works better.

Are most people with non—small cell lung cancer smokers?
About 15 percent have never smoked. Another 40 percent have quit smoking. So the majority of lung cancers these days occur in people who are not currently smoking. The lungs go close to being back to normal after you quit, but are not quite normal. Still, the biggest thing you can do to reduce your risk is stop smoking.

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