Stage IV

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Stage IV lung cancer, with distant metastasis, is treated with chemotherapy or with supportive care.

Sometimes, a patient with lung cancer and a solitary metastasis to brain, bone or adrenal can have surgical resection of the metastasis, as well as the primary tumor, with cure.

Medical oncologists are divided on whether chemotherapy should be routinely offered in patients with Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer.

Effective chemotherapy does exist for all stages of small cell lung cancer, and all such patients should be evaluated by an oncologist.

Although cure cannot be achieved in most cases in this stage, quality of life can be maximized by skillful medical and nursing care, with careful attention to proper pain management and nutrition.

Continuing efforts are ongoing to find a curative chemotherapy for lung cancer, through clinical trials testing new forms of chemotherapy.

Exciting new discoveries in molecular biology of cancer offer the hope that new types of treatments using immunotherapy, gene therapy using anti-sense constructs and ribozymes and other new types of biological treatment of cancer will be available in the future.

For more information on clinical trials Clinical Trials

For more information on Guidelines for unresectable lung cancer visit the ASCO web page at Practice Guideline NSCLC

For more information on pain relief in cancer patients:
AHCPR Supported Guidelines: Management of Cancer Pain, No. 9

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