Lung Cancer Health Center

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The long-term outcome (prognosis) for lung cancer that does not respond to treatment as hoped or that comes back after being treated is poor, and treatment focuses on managing your pain and improving your quality of life (palliative care).

Treatment to help control your symptoms (such as pain, coughing up blood, shortness of breath, and weakness) may include:

• Radiation therapy. This may be done to shrink cancers that make swallowing or breathing difficult or that are causing pain.
• Chemotherapy.
• Chemotherapy combined with radiation therapy.
• Surgery, if your cancer has spread to your brain.
• Laser surgery.
• Radiation applied directly to the cancer during surgery.

Other treatments being studied for lung cancer include radiofrequency ablation and cryosurgery. Each of these is a way of trying to destroy the cancer cells without major surgery. These treatments may be useful for people who are not able to have surgery either because they are in poor health or because their cancer is too advanced.

Additional treatment measures

• Oxygen therapy may relieve your shortness of breath. It is usually used at the end stage of the disease, but it may also be used for pneumonia or other treatable conditions.
• Thoracentesis is used to remove fluid from around your lungs (pleural effusion). A large amount of fluid may cause pain and shortness of breath.
• Pleurodesis is used to prevent fluid buildup around your lungs. Pleurodesis is a procedure that is intended to cause inflammation of the lining around your lungs. The irritated tissue reacts by producing scar tissue, which causes the two layers of the lung lining to stick together. This removes the space where fluid can build up around your lungs. Pleurodesis is commonly used to treat fluid buildup around your lungs that returns after repeated thoracentesis.
• Small tubes (pleural catheters) to drain fluid from around the lungs are used to relieve fluid buildup (pleural effusion).
• Treatments that burn (cauterize) selected areas of blocked airways or that place stents-small, coiled, wire-mesh tubes that can be inserted into a blocked airway and expanded to hold it open-are also becoming more common.
• Pain medicines can be taken regularly. These may include prescribed narcotic medicines, such as codeine, or medicines you can buy without a prescription, such as aspirin and similar drugs.

Complementary therapies

People sometimes use complementary therapies along with medical treatment to help relieve symptoms and side effects of cancer treatments. Some of the complementary therapies that may be helpful include:

• Acupuncture to relieve pain.
• Meditation or yoga to relieve stress.
• Light massage (not deep tissue or intense pressure) or biofeedback to ease tension.
• Breathing exercises for relaxation.

For people with lung cancer, studies have shown that mind-body treatments like those mentioned above may help you feel better and cope better with treatment. These treatments also may reduce chronic low back pain, joint pain, headaches, and pain from treatments. Acupuncture may also help with nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy.⁹