How to treat small cell lung cancer

Update Date: 2022-11-20 Source: Network

summary

Small cell lung cancer accounts for about 20% of lung cancer. It has high malignancy, short doubling time, early and extensive metastasis, is sensitive to chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and has high initial remission rate. However, it is prone to secondary drug resistance and recurrence. Systemic chemotherapy is the main treatment. Let's talk about how to treat small cell lung cancer.

How to treat small cell lung cancer

First, chemotherapy is the main treatment for small cell lung cancer, which can be combined with or sequential with radiotherapy. Less than 5% of the early patients who are limited to the lung parenchyma are considered for surgical treatment. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy or sequential chemoradiotherapy is the main treatment for limited stage small cell lung cancer. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy is better than sequential therapy. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy should be given as early as possible, and prophylactic whole brain radiotherapy should be given. Prophylactic whole brain radiotherapy has significant benefits for survival. Extensive stage small cell lung cancer is mainly treated with chemotherapy, and local or metastatic treatment is selected.

Second, surgical treatment according to TNM stage T1-2N0M0 patients, confirmed by mediastinoscopy or surgical staging, can be resected, even if the patients achieve complete resection also need chemotherapy.

Third: single drug therapy. Before 1990, there were many studies on the efficacy of many single drugs in the treatment of small cell lung cancer. In recent years, the efficacy of some drugs has been observed, such as etoposide, phosphoramide, aminorubicin, paclitaxel, and some combined chemotherapy

matters needing attention

Small cell lung cancer is a kind of undifferentiated cancer, which is not suitable for surgery. It is very sensitive to chemotherapy, but chemotherapy is a double-edged sword. The patient's discomfort is not enough, the late survival rate is not high, and the quality of life is not good. Therefore, biological immunotherapy is usually used in medicine to suppress and eradicate small cell lung cancer. At present, the mature tumor biological therapy is DC-CIK autologous cell immunotherapy, and this technology is also the only biological therapy approved by the Ministry of health.