Lung cancer is a dangerous disease and to get cured from this patients need proper treatment and when it’s on advance stage it more necessary to get proper treatment. There are lots of treatments for lung cancer, in this post I am going to discuss about systemic therapy for advance Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC).
Treatment for lung cancer patients depend on the type of cell, stage and overall medical condition of patient. Early stages cancer i.e. Stage I, II and III NSCLC or SCLC be treated by drugs, surgery, radiation therapy (RT) or chemotherapy. Frequently, patients with stage IV NSCLC or advance NSCLC are treated by systemic therapy.
In stage IV or advance NSCLC tumor spreads to other parts of body and sometime it is hard to remove it by surgery or sometime patient is not in the condition to bear surgery, then we need alternate treatment.
In systemic therapy intravenous (IV) tube placed into a vein using a needle or in a pill or capsule that is swallowed orally to give treatment drug which reach tumor cells through bloodstream. There are two type of systemic therapy:
- Chemotherapy: In chemotherapy drugs are given to the patient to stopping the tumor cells growth and dividing.
- Targeted Therapy: In targeted therapy treatment specific genes, proteins or the tissues that help in growth or survival for tumor are targeted. This type of treatment blocking the growth and spreading of cancer cells and limiting the damage of healthy cells. Specific genes genetic changes help in growth of NSCLC and this type of therapy is done for those genes to stop or blocking the growth. Initially, U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve the treatment for EGFR, ALK, and ROS1 genes only.
The main goal of this systemic therapy for stage IV NSCLC is to stop the growth or dividing of lung cancer cells, so the lung cancer cannot spread more and patient live batter life.