A recent study published in JAMA found that lung transplantation was associated with substantially better early survival than medical management alone for patients with terminal lung cancer confined to the lungs.

Study Findings

Seventeen patients with terminal lung cancer underwent lung transplant, while 81 received medical management alone. One year later, all transplanted patients were still alive, compared to fewer than half of the patients treated with medical therapies.

The study’s findings challenge the long-held guidance that patients with stage IV lung cancer should not be eligible for lung transplants. According to study leader Dr. Ankit Bharat, the results suggest that giving lungs to certain advanced cancer patients is not a waste of donated organs.

Implications

The study’s results have significant implications for the treatment of lung cancer. If the cancer is rigorously proven to be confined to the lungs, and standard therapies have been exhausted, transplantation may offer a new path forward.

In a separate study, researchers found that cancer is often diagnosed at later stages in men than in women. The study, which reviewed over 2.4 million cases, identified 16 cancers where men were significantly more likely to be diagnosed after the disease had spread to local lymph nodes.

Additionally, a new discovery has overturned decades of assumptions about human biology based on rodent research. Scientists have found that the manufacturing of red blood cells in humans works differently than previously thought, with significant implications for our understanding of disease mechanisms and the development of therapies.

Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.