BY AMBER SMITH

Mammograms screen for breast cancer. Colonoscopies screen for colon cancers. Did you know lung cancer screening exists, to find early lung cancers?

“Getting the word out has been the biggest hurdle that we’ve had, just making sure that people know that lung cancer screening exists,” says Michael Archer, DO, medical director for the lung cancer screening program at Upstate.

“There is good research to show that when folks are screened for lung cancer, we identify tumors earlier, and we are able to get patients treated to cure more frequently,” Archer says.

Early diagnosis is key, for a cancer that accounts for about one in five cancer deaths.

Once diagnosed, the next step is learning the stage of a cancer, or how advanced it is, says Jason Wallen, MD, medical director of the lung cancer and thoracic oncology program at the Upstate Cancer Center. That helps determine which treatments are options.

Surgery is often an option for early-stage and even Stage 2 or 3 lung cancers.

At Upstate, all of the lung cancer surgeries are minimally invasive and done with robotic assistance, Wallen says, adding that most cancer centers across the country are adopting minimally invasive surgery.

“It’s better for patients because the incisions are smaller, which generally means that they hurt less. There’s less damage to bones, so less cracking or cutting of bone involved. In fact, in most minimally invasive surgeries, there’s none of that.

“And so you see faster recoveries, less use of narcotics, which many people are concerned about these days. You see shorter hospital stays and, even more importantly, fewer complications. So we definitely want to be doing as much minimally invasive surgery as possible,” he says.

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons collects data from Upstate for its national database of all the major thoracic surgical centers in the United States. Wallen says, “We are below average for our complication rates. We are amongst the top for our rates of minimally invasive surgery, and we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the country.”

 

Hear Archer discuss screening on "The Informed Patient" podcast.

 

This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of Cancer Care magazine.