Lung cancer survivor, doctors encourage early screening

Susan Verdier first went to her doctor with symptoms of fatigue and coughing, thinking it may have been pneumonia. She was treated for bronchitis, but the coughing continued for a couple months.

This led the Bellbrook woman to get a chest X-ray and then a CT scan in February 2018 when doctors uncovered a malignant tumor in her lung.

Lung cancer is the deadliest type of cancer, doctors say, but a low percentage of people who qualify for annual screenings undergo them, an American Lung Association report shows.

“Early detection is what … saved me. It stopped me from going from stage 3 to stage 4. It was just starting to spread all through my body. Had I not followed up on it, who knows where I would be today,” Verdier said. “Your life is more important than what other people think of you.”

Since screenings can reduce the death rate for lung cancer by 20%, local doctors are encouraging people to talk with their health providers and get checked if they meet the high-risk criteria during Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

“I was a non-smoker for over 20 years before I was ever diagnosed with lung cancer,” Verdier said. “There is a huge stigma when it comes to lung cancer, which is also why the funding for lung cancer (research) is nothing compared to the funding for breast cancer (research). I know breast cancer is a little more prevalent than lung cancer, but you would be surprised at the amount of people that have lung cancer that won’t share the fact that they have lung cancer because of the stigma that goes along with it.”

Verdier went into surgery to get the upper left lobe in her left lung removed, but the tumor had begun to grow around her pulmonary artery, so doctors were not able to remove it. This led her treatment with radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy.

The first question she usually gets when she tells people she had lung cancer is if she was a smoker.

“I smoked for about 10 years, maybe a half a pack a day,” she said. She smoked her last cigarette on Feb. 16, 1996. Her cancer was likely caused by environmental factors, she said.

When lung and bronchus cancers are diagnosed at the local stage, which is when tumors are confined to the lung and bronchus, 60% of people are estimated to survive five years or more after diagnosis, the Ohio Department of Health says. When diagnosed after the cancer has spread to distant organs or tissues, only 7% survive five years or more.

For all cancers combined, five year relative survival in Ohio has steadily increased since 1996.

“(A) traditional or historical problem with lung cancer has been the late diagnosis. Typically, it would not be causing any symptoms until it is more advanced,” said Dr. Ravi Desai, pulmonary and critical care medicine physician with Kettering Health.

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Cancer accounts for nearly one of every four deaths, according to the Ohio Department of Health. Cancer resulted in the deaths of nearly 25,000 Ohioans in 2020, a rate 10% higher than the national average.

Lung cancer screenings are done annually with low-dose radiation CT scans for those at a high risk, which can reduce the lung cancer death rate by up to 20%, according to the American Lung Association.

“It has been compared with chest X-rays,” said Dr. Satheesh Kathula, oncologist and hematologist at the Premier Blood and Cancer Center.

Nationally, only 5.8% of those at high risk get screened.

“There’s a lot more room to improve,” Kathula said about the need for more awareness of lung cancer screenings.

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A person is eligible for lung cancer screening if they are between 50-80 years of age, have a “20 pack-year history,” and are a current smoker, or have quit within the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines for screening. A “pack year” is defined as when someone smokes a pack a day for 20 years, or two packs a day for 10 years.

“For lung cancer, 80% of the lung cancers are secondary to smoking and but there are about 20% of the patient who get diagnosed with lung cancer (and) they do not have any smoking history,” Desai said.

Environmental factors like exposure to second-hand smoke, radon, or asbestos can also be lead to lung cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates radon causes 21,000 lung cancer deaths each year.

“Patients who stopped smoking more than 15 years ago have a low chance, less chance, of getting lung cancer,” Kathula said.

Most people with lung cancer don’t have symptoms until the cancer is advanced. Symptoms of lung cancer can be vague, such as coughing that gets worse or doesn’t go away, chest pain, shortness of breath, tiredness, and unexplained weight loss, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Coughing up blood is also a symptom, but it doesn’t necessarily occur for everyone with lung cancer.

“You kind of think when you’re going into a place where a bunch of people are battling cancer that it’s going to be a really sad place, but I never felt that when I would go up there,” Verdier said about her experience at the Kettering Health Cancer Center, where she would receive regular hours-long infusions. “It seemed to be kind of a happy place.”

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Verdier’s treatments lasted for approximately two years, spanning over 2018 and 2019, before she went into remission. She continues to be cancer free, and she encourages people to get screened for lung cancer even if they have grapple with stigma surrounding the cancer.

Find out if you are eligible for lung cancer screening at SavedByTheScan.org.

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