Good News for Older Patients with Lung Cancer

Lung cancer survival after surgery was higher than expected for older patients

(RxWiki News) Post-surgery survival rates for older patients with lung cancer may be improving, a new study found.

And with increasing numbers of patients older than 65 being diagnosed with lung cancer, that's definitely welcome news, said the Emory Clinic researchers behind this study.

To study post-surgery survival in older lung cancer patients, these researchers looked at tens of thousands of patient records from two large databases. They found that older patients who underwent surgery to remove stage I (early-stage) lung cancer had a median survival of 6.7 years after surgery — nearly two years longer than a five-year survival benchmark described by the National Cancer Institute.

Among older patients with stage III lung cancer, 29.9 percent survived for at least five years. For patients with stage IV lung cancer, that figure was 26.7 percent.

The study authors noted that this data may be significant because the number of lung cancer cases is expected to increase as people live longer.

This study was published recently in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. The authors disclosed no funding sources or conflicts of interest.

Review Date: 
May 5, 2016