Lung Cancer Research Paper

Lung cancer is a disease in which the lungs become infected with malignant cancer cells. It comes in two forms: Primary and secondary. Primary lung cancer starts in the lungs while secondary lung cancer starts outside of the lungs and spreads into the lungs. The two types of primary lung cancer are small cell, which look like oats and are likely to spread across the body, and non-small cell, which consists of smaller subtypes that correspond to different people; squamous cell carcinoma is more likely in men, adenocarcinoma is more common in women, and large cell carcinoma spreads very quickly. The cells that start in the lungs are small in comparison to other cells, and they spread very quickly. On the other hand, the cells that spread into …show more content…
The most common are chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. However, there are other treatments for lung cancer as well, including pneumonectomy and immunotherapy. A pneumonectomy works by removing the damaged lung. This treatment is only used when the patient is in too critical of a state and will probably not survive other surgeries, radiation and/or chemotherapy. Moreover, the surgeon will determine which of the three pneumonectomies a patient will receive. A normal pneumonectomy in which one lung is removed, a partial pneumonectomy, in which many pieces of lung are removed, or an extrapleural pneumonectomy, which removes the lung, diaphragm and parts of the membranes of both the heart and the chest cavity. Whichever procedure is used, all require general anesthesia. This procedure usually lasts from one to three hours, and is simply the act of removing infected parts from the body. Most patients survive the procedure, and must work on rehabilitating their body. Additionally, immunotherapy is an alternative treatment to this disease. It works by removing the barricades that block killer T-cells from identifying cancerous cells. This allows for only cancerous cells to be killed, which may prove immunotherapy to be one of the best treatments if it keeps improving. Despite being approved by many groups including the FDA, immunotherapy is very hard to obtain, for it can cost up to $10,000 a dose. However, immunotherapy still is one of the most successful treatments to lung

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