© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Thoracic Society
EDITORIAL
Chemotherapy for advanced lung cancer
Chemotherapy for advanced lung cancer: is the glass half full or half empty?
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr G Silvestri
Associate Professor of Medicine, The Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA; silvestri@musc.edu
Patients with advanced lung cancer should share in the decision whether or not to undergo chemotherapy
Keywords: lung cancer; chemotherapy; patients’ views; decision making
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Pulmonologists have generally taken a nihilistic view of chemotherapy for the treatment of advanced lung cancer. In a study of beliefs among pulmonologists in the therapeutic treatment of lung cancer, Schroen and colleagues found that only one third of those surveyed believed that chemotherapy conferred a survival benefit for patients with stage IV non-small cell lung cancer and 35% said they would refer patients with metastatic cancer directly to a hospice without referral to medical oncology.1 A survey of British physicians also found that beliefs about the benefits of chemotherapy did not correspond with current medical knowledge and portrayed a more negative impression than the literature would indicate.2 There may be legitimate explanations for this difference in perception about outcomes for this patient population. As a group, respiratory physicians may not believe that the small survival benefit achieved with chemotherapy is enough to offset the
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- Using the Number Needed to Treat to Make Decisions About Chemotherapy for Lung Cancer
- Mark D. Siegel
- Thorax Online, 18 Nov 2004 [Full text]
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