Lung cancer is treatable if it's caught early. The best treatment for lung cancer is surgery. If it is not caught early, as it is, unfortunately, in two-thirds of patients, we have made some progress in terms of the use of chemotherapy ... and radiation.
The problem with that is you're exposing yourself to radiation from CAT scans every year and many times you will be finding things on the CAT scans that are abnormal but are not necessarily cancer, and they require additional follow-up.
It remains to be seen whether or not this will be helpful for the entire population before we make a statement about this. But it is being studied, it has been studied, and we're waiting for the results of that study to be completed ... hopefully within the next couple of years.
There are some exciting new molecular-targeted drugs that are helpful, and we're understanding the molecular biology of lung cancer much better today in helping to design more rational treatments. But unfortunately, the vast majority of people with lung cancer today will die from their disease.
We don't completely understand why they develop lung cancer.
We desperately need ways of detecting early lung cancers.
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