A New World of Lung Cancer Therapy Awaits Pope Leo
New York Times · LC · trust 53/100
Lung cancer is still a leading cause of cancer death, but that rate is half what it was in the 1990s, partly because newly developed treatments are working.
Listen · 5:47 min Share full article 1 Pope Leo greeted his personal physician, Luigi Carbone, as he arrived at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome on Tuesday to remove a lung nodule. Credit... Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters By Gina Kolata and Carolyn Y. Johnson
In a way, Pope Leo XIV may be lucky he got lung cancer now and not, say, six years ago. Treatments have changed so much, specialists say, that the old days are almost unrecognizable.
For many patients, said Karen Knudsen, the chief executive of the Parker Institute, lung cancer is no longer the dire diagnosis it was in the past.
Dr. Lecia Sequist, a thoracic oncologist at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, said, “I think a lot of people have that gut reaction about lung cancer — that it can be rapidly fatal — but that is a little bit outdated, especially if it’s caught early.”
She added, “It’s really just a whole new paradigm in lung cancer, and patients are living much longer and cure rates are higher than they were 10 to 20 years ago.”
Lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women, killing more than 124,000 Americans each year. But the death rate today is half what it was in the 1990s, partly because fewer people smoke but also because newly developed treatments are working.
Pope Leo’s cancer, an adenocarcinoma, was discovered during a routine medical test. The pope’s doctors removed a lobe of his lung on Tuesday and are doing additional tests to determine what additional treatments, if any, are warranted.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Read the original at New York Times →
Open in TruthVane →