How Do I Know If My Lung Cancer Treatment Is Working?
How Do I Know If My Lung Cancer Treatment Is Working? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
How is lung cancer treatment monitored? Lung cancer specialist Dr. Jessica Bauman explains how regular imaging is used to gauge treatment effectiveness.
Dr. Jessica Bauman is assistant professor in the department of hematology/oncology and as associate program director of the hematology/oncology fellowship training program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Learn more about Dr. Bauman here.
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Transcript:
Katherine:
Once a patient has started treatment, how do you know if it’s working?
Dr. Bauman:
So, we do regular imaging. So, once you have a diagnosis of lung cancer, a CAT scanner will become your friend. In general, depending on what stage of lung cancer you have, you will have a bunch of imaging up front, and then once a treatment plan is put into place, after that treatment has either been completed or started, you will be monitored, in general, regularly for the lung cancer diagnosis. Now, after surgery, that will be for more for surveillance to make sure that the lung cancer doesn’t come back. But if it is more in the setting of a stage IV lung cancer, then the imaging really helps us determine, “Is the treatment working or not?”
And so, after we start a treatment, usually anywhere between six and eight weeks, we repeat imaging to see, “Is this working? Is it smaller? Is it the same? Has it grown?”
And based on that imaging, and based on how the patient is doing with the treatment, we then decide, “Do we continue this treatment, or do we need to change to a new treatment?” And so, we regularly monitor the patient’s cancer through regular imaging.
