Chemotherapy Selection for 1st line Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer ( NSCLC )

Today, I read this posting in Cancer GRACE and feel that it is good to share with you.
It's posted by Dr Weiss on April 16th , 2011 .

Chemotherapy selection for 1st line Non Small Cell Lung Cancer ( NSCLC ) , The importance of getting it right the first time.

Introduction: Why Chemotherapy?

Every cancer therapy has two purposes:
to improve duration of life, and to improve quality of life.
Every other measure of chemotherapy success, such as response rate or
progression-free-survival, is a surrogate to these two true goals.
I am using the broken record as my pseudo-apology for repeating this mantra repeatedly on GRACE, to my colleagues, and in my mind every time I make a treatment decision.
Chemotherapy is the most important treatment for achieving these two goals in stage IV disease.
Stage IV means that the cancer has spread and is no longer curable.
Incurable is not the same as untreatable.
Cure means eliminating every last cancer cell.
Treatment means providing real benefit, in the form of achieving these two goals.
Cancer cells are microscopic. The tip of a pen is the size of more than ten billion cells.
So, if a single cell has spread to a site, say, the liver, you won’t be able to see that cell on a CT or even the most sophisticated PET/CT.
So, once you see the cancer having spread to distant sites, it becomes systemic-in more sites than you can see; we call this “metastatic” or stage IV disease.
To achieve our two key goals, you need to knock down the cancer everywhere-the places that you can see and those you can’t.
Chemo gets almost everywhere in the body and is therefore the best and most important way to do this for most patients with metastatic disease.
Chemotherapy’s effect on the quality of life question really is a balance.
Chemotherapy can cause side effects, including nausea and fatigue.
However, on the flip side, in addition to prolonging duration of life, chemotherapy also provides a quality of life benefit when successful.
That’s because cancer causes symptoms that chemotherapy can delay or prevent.
For example, when cancer spreads to bone, it can cause pain and fractures.
When it presses on airways, it can cause shortness of breath and pneumonia.
Cancer causes fatigue, organ failure, blood clots, and numerous other problems.
When chemotherapy prevents more symptoms than it causes there is a net gain of quality of life.

....... to continue , please click the below link to the original posting in Cancer GRACE
http://cancergrace.org:80/lung/2010/04/16/introduction-to-first-line-therapy-for-advanced-nsclc/

Wish this sharing will help you to undertand more about chemotherapy and type of drug for treatment of Lung Cancer .

SK