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Treatment overview
The type of treatment will vary depending on your overall health and the type and stage of your lung cancer.
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Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): For non-small cell lung cancers that have not spread beyond the lung, surgery is often used to remove the cancer. Surgery may also be used in combination with radiation therapy and chemotherapy in cancers that are more advanced. These treatments can be given prior to surgery to shrink tumors or afterward to kill cancer cells that surgery may not have excised.
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Small cell lung cancer (SCLC): Surgery is used less frequently in small-cell lung cancer because it tends to spread more rapidly to other parts of the body and so rarely is found when it is still confined to a single lung. Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for small-cell lung cancer, as these medicines circulate in the blood, killing lung cancer cells throughout the body. Chemotherapy may be used to shrink lung tumors, slow their growth, slow the growth of cancer that has spread to other parts of the body, or ease pain and other symptoms. Radiation therapy also may be used in conjunction with chemotherapy. Radiation therapy may be used to treat tumors that are confined to the lung or other areas in the chest. And because SCLC often spreads to the brain, your doctor may also recommend brain radiation to kill off tiny bits of cancer that may have spread to the brain but are not yet evident on brain scans. In addition to causing nausea and fatigue, brain radiation can lead to problems with short-term memory, so it's important to weigh carefully the costs and benefits of this therapy care with your healthcare providers.
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Mesothelioma: Chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery can all be part of the treatment for mesothelioma. Combined approaches that utilize these therapies together, particularly using chemotherapy prior to surgery, as well as new drugs that specifically target mesothelioma cells, are currently being tested.
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