Adenocarcinoma

Adenocarcinoma: A Form of Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)

There are three types of non-small cell lung cancer. The three types of non-small cell lung cancer are squamous carcinoma, large cell carcinoma, and adenocarcinoma. Adenocarcinoma is the most common non-small-cell lung cancer - especially in women.

About forty percent of all lung cancer cases diagnosed today are adenocarcinoma. It represents the most common form of non-small cell lung cancer diagnosed in the United States - this is especially true with women. When adenocarcinoma develops in the lung's air sacs, it is called bronchioalveolar adenocarcinoma.

Treatment of Potentially Operable (Stage IIIA) NSCLC

These are locally advanced lung cancers with mediastinal lymphadenopathy (N2), making complete resection difficult. In recent years, there have been attempts to increase their resectability with pre-operative induction chemotherapy. This, in theory, may decrease tumour size to allow more ready resection, decrease micro-metastasis, decrease surgical seeding and increase patient acceptance. Preliminary results show that induction chemotherapy does not cause a delay in primary tumour control and may actually increase survival compared with surgery alone,10 although the final verdict has to come from the results of large, randomised phase III trials.

Treatment of Locally Advanced (Stage IIIB) NSCLC

These are unresectable tumours. For patients with good performance status and minimal weight loss, concurrent chemo-radiotherapy has resulted in better survival than radiotherapy alone. Multiple daily fractions of radiotherapy have not resulted in better survival than traditional standard fractionation once daily.