Lung Cancer

The primary treatment options for lung cancer include surgery, thermal ablation, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and targeted therapies. The type of treatment you receive will depend on a number of different considerations, such as the type of lung cancer you have, its stage, your overall health and your treatment preferences. This page aims to give you a comprehensive overview of how lung cancer treatment works in the private health system.

The two approaches for lung cancer surgery, performed under general anaesthesia, include:

• Thoracotomy – Where a long incision is made through the skin and between the ribs to access the lung
• Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) – A minimally invasive procedure (keyhole surgery) that uses several small incisions in the chest wall to access the lung. This procedure often results in less postoperative pain and complications, a shorter hospital stay and faster recovery compared to a thoracotomy

Stereotactic radiation therapy

Stereotactic radiation therapy to the lung is most commonly used to treat early stage primary lung cancer or metastatic tumours that have spread from other organs in the body.

Stereotactic radiation therapy for lung cancer involves the use of specialised equipment to ensure the accurate representation of your breathing motion. During your simulation or CT appointment, the radiation therapists will monitor and record your breathing pattern so that we can replicate it each day for treatment. By knowing exactly where the tumour moves during your breathing cycles, we can reduce the amount of healthy lung being irradiated by focusing and targeting the treatment beams precisely at the moving tumour.

If you have early lung cancer which involves small tumours, you may receive thermal ablation rather than surgery. This involves the insertion of a needle-like probe into the tumour in your lung, guided by CT scans, which uses heat from radio waves to destroy cancerous cells. 

Lung cancer cells are made up of multiple different building blocks, including genes and proteins. Targeted therapy focuses on targeting specific parts of these building blocks, known as modular targets, to stop lung cancer cells from growing and spreading.

For non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), targeted therapies can be used to stop modular targets such as EGFR, ALK and the KRAS G12C gene (found in 13% of cases) to prevent the cancer’s growth and spread⁶. Targeted therapies are only effective for certain lung cancers which have these modular targets. Your care team will examine the make-up of your cancer cells to determine if targeted therapies are suitable for you.

Kinase inhibitors are targeted therapy drugs that work by blocking the kinase enzyme, which promotes lung cancer cell growth and helps provides nutrients for these cancer cells to grow. Blocking this enzyme helps to stop the growth and spread of lung cancer cells. Kinase inhibitors are typically used in the treatment of advanced lung cancer and are taken orally as a tablet or capsule once or twice daily. 

Types of kinase inhibitors include:

• Alectinib
• Afatinib
• Brigatinib
• Entrectinib
• Lorlatinib
• Osimertinib
• Erlotinib
• Gefitinib
• Crizotinib