Smoking costs our nation millions in health care dollars every year, and it's responsible for hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths. Did you know a lot of people who never smoked get lung cancer? 160,000 people die from lung cancer every year, and...
Smoking costs our nation millions in health care dollars every year, and it's responsible for hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths. Did you know a lot of people who never smoked get lung cancer? 160,000 people die from lung cancer every year, and about 20 thousand of them never smoked. In fact, lung cancer in "never smokers" is the sixth leading cause of ALL cancer deaths. The good news is researchers know now it's a completely different cancer than lung cancer in smokers. Now they're focusing on finding more effective ways to treat it. Unfortunately, the discoveries are too late for too many.
"My name is Ray Rickert and I was married to Jodi Lou Rickert. Jodi was diagnosed with lung cancer Feb. 7, 2006 and died April 28, 2008, at age 36. Jodi never smoked. We were just speechless. To have a diagnosis of lung cancer and then have it be stage 4 right from the start was mindboggling."
Standard chemo, radiation, and finally a newer chemo couldn't save her. "Jodi's dream was to be a mother and thank goodness that happened. We had the chance to have a child, our daughter Sophie. We had a book made together with a bunch of photos and one of the photos was captioned with the phrase, a child spells love, T-I-M-E, time," says Ray.
"My name is Jerry Sorkin. I'm from Bethesda, Maryland, and I was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2007." Jerry never smoked either, and he's getting a treatment similar to Jodi's. "I feel incredibly lucky to be here two-plus years after I was diagnosed with lung cancer when in that time, hundreds of thousands of people aren't."
So, why did the treatment work for one patient and not another? Dr. Charles Rudin of Johns Hopkins says, "For years our approach to lung cancer was really based on histology. That means what does the tumor look like under a microscope? That's a pretty rough estimate for what is underlying the cancer. We are treating different types of cancer very differently now and one thing that we're doing that has particular application to the lung cancer in never smokers is we are beginning to molecularly profile these tumors to look at the genetics of the cancer that underlies the reason they got the cancer."
Dr. Rudin adds, "As we learn more about these tumors and the genetics underlying the development for these cancers, we have the opportunity to develop therapies that specifically target those alterations. I think that really may change the long-term outlook for lung cancer patients."
A few of the new treatments are being tested in patient now and many more are in development, creating hope that more mothers like Jodi Rickert will live to see their little girls grow up.
Click Here to for More Information About Lung Cancer & Never Smokers From Johns Hopkins Medicine
