New system for classifying lung cancers

< http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/03/content_6657034.htm>
New method for predicting lung cancer survival
www.chinaview.cn 2007-09-03 19:21:50

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- A thorough review of a decades-old
method used to predict lung cancer survival means thousands more patients
each year could be offered surgery or more aggressive therapy -- such as
chemotherapy -- under a new system that classifies many tumors as more
treatable.

The new guidance was presented Saturday at a conference of lung cancer
specialists in Seoul, South Korea. It is expected to be adopted by
policy-making groups in the next year.

"There will clearly be shifting of patients from categories not
operable to operable" — as many as 10,000 a year in the United States,
said Dr. David Johnson, a lung cancer specialist at Vanderbilt University
in Nashville, Tenn. He reviewed the plan, which was partly published in a
medical journal recently.

Lung cancer is the world's No. 1 cancer killer, claiming 1.3 million
lives each year. In the United States, 213,380 new cases and 160,390
deaths from the disease are expected this year. Nearly 60 percent of
people die within one year of diagnosis, and nearly 75 percent die within
two years, American Cancer Society statistics show.

The current system, based on a tumors size and how far it has spread,
was developed from about 5,000 tumor samples from University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center in Houston decades ago — before improved scanning
technology was available to evaluate a cancer's spread.

The new plan is based on 100,000 tumor samples from around the world
including Asia, where lung cancer rates are projected to climb because of
trends in smoking, unhealthy lifestyles and aging populations.

Dr. Peter Goldstraw, a surgeon at the Royal Brompton Hospital in
London, led the project, and Canadian scientists independently validated
the recommended changes by comparing survival across geographic regions.

Among the changes: creating more sub-stages for tumor size,
reassigning some large tumors to a more advanced stage, reclassifying
tumors that have spread into the fluid surrounding the lung, and
recognizing that spread to certain lymph nodes is more dangerous than its
spread to others.

J wrote:

> < http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/03/content_6657034.htm>
> New method for predicting lung cancer survival
> www.chinaview.cn 2007-09-03 19:21:50
>
> BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- A thorough review of a decades-old
> method used to predict lung cancer survival means thousands more patients
> each year could be offered surgery or more aggressive therapy -- such as
> chemotherapy -- under a new system that classifies many tumors as more
> treatable.
>
> The new guidance was presented Saturday at a conference of lung cancer
> specialists in Seoul, South Korea. It is expected to be adopted by
> policy-making groups in the next year.
>
> "There will clearly be shifting of patients from categories not
> operable to operable" — as many as 10,000 a year in the United States,
> said Dr. David Johnson, a lung cancer specialist at Vanderbilt University
> in Nashville, Tenn. He reviewed the plan, which was partly published in a
> medical journal recently.
>
> Lung cancer is the world's No. 1 cancer killer, claiming 1.3 million
> lives each year. In the United States, 213,380 new cases and 160,390
> deaths from the disease are expected this year. Nearly 60 percent of
> people die within one year of diagnosis, and nearly 75 percent die within
> two years, American Cancer Society statistics show.
>
> The current system, based on a tumors size and how far it has spread,
> was developed from about 5,000 tumor samples from University of Texas M.D.
> Anderson Cancer Center in Houston decades ago — before improved scanning
> technology was available to evaluate a cancer's spread.
>
> The new plan is based on 100,000 tumor samples from around the world
> including Asia, where lung cancer rates are projected to climb because of
> trends in smoking, unhealthy lifestyles and aging populations.
>
> Dr. Peter Goldstraw, a surgeon at the Royal Brompton Hospital in
> London, led the project, and Canadian scientists independently validated
> the recommended changes by comparing survival across geographic regions.
>
> Among the changes: creating more sub-stages for tumor size,
> reassigning some large tumors to a more advanced stage, reclassifying
> tumors that have spread into the fluid surrounding the lung, and
> recognizing that spread to certain lymph nodes is more dangerous than its
> spread to others.

More details here http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auth:Goldstraw,P

The seventh edition of the TNM Classification of Malignant Tumors is due to be
published early in 2009. In preparation for this, the International
Association for the Study of Lung Cancer established its Lung Cancer Staging
Project in 1998. The recommendations of this committee for changes to the T,
N, and M descriptors have been published. This report contains the proposals
for the new stage groupings. [see the web page for the rest]
J