Treatment of small cell lung cancer

Nowadays, lung cancer has always been a disease that people are very afraid of. Although medicine has been making progress, the mortality rate of this disease is still very high. So the treatment method is the most important. What are the treatment methods for small cell lung cancer?

The treatment of small cell lung cancer is mainly chemotherapy, which can be combined or sequentially with radiotherapy. For less than 5% of early-stage patients whose disease is limited to the lung parenchyma, surgical treatment is considered. Limited-stage SCLC is mainly treated with synchronous chemoradiotherapy or chemotherapy and radiotherapy sequentially. Synchronous chemoradiotherapy is better than sequential treatment. Synchronous chemoradiotherapy should be performed as early as possible, and preventive whole-brain radiotherapy should be given. Preventive whole-brain radiotherapy has significant benefits for survival. Extensive-stage SCLC is mainly treated with chemotherapy, and local or metastatic lesions can be treated at an appropriate time.

Surgical treatment: Patients with TNM stage T1-2N0M0 confirmed by mediastinoscopy or surgical staging can undergo surgical resection. Even patients who achieve complete resection still need chemotherapy after surgery.

Drug treatment: Single-drug regimen. Before the 1990s, there were many studies on the efficacy of many single-drug drugs for SCLC, and in recent years, the effectiveness of some drugs has also been observed.