 Women Lift Smokescreen on Lung Cancer—By Janet Rhodes Published: November, 2005  Sandy Britt on her seventh wedding anniversary, the day after her devastating lung cancer diagnosis. "My heart was breaking," she said. "I'm crying with a smile on my face." Say the words, "lung cancer", and many people picture an older man with a cigarette in his mouth. At only 47 years old and with rosy cheeks and clear eyes, Sandy Britt does not fit that image. Like 10 to 15 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer each year, she has never smoked. Lung cancer has become a woman's issue. Eighty percent of the lifelong nonsmokers diagnosed with lung cancer are women, and the disease will kill twice as many women as breast cancer this year. "I was stage IV [the most advanced stage] when I was diagnosed; the doctor said she wasn't going to treat me at all," recalled Britt, an Alameda resident and a member of the Lung Cancer Alliance's California Committee, which since July has been seeking a gubernatorial proclamation declaring November California Lung Cancer Awareness Month. "Stage I is the only curable lung cancer," explained Britt, whose father and 42-year-old brother died of lung cancer, 10 and 20 years after each had quit smoking. "If a parent or sibling dies of lung cancer, you are three times more likely to get the disease. But when I asked my brother's oncologist about getting checked out every year, he said to get a mammogram instead." More than 60 percent of all new lung cancers are diagnosed in those who never smoked or who quit, sometimes decades ago. But many physicians seem unaware of that. Three years before her diagnosis, Britt had had an abnormal chest x-ray that was not taken seriously. As a 43-year-old nonsmoker, she didn't fit the profile of a lung cancer patient. "The doctor said there was no need to follow up, even when he had a patient sitting in front of him with an abnormal chest x-ray and a family history of the disease." "Shame on that doctor," said Laurie Fenton, president of the Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA), a national advocacy group for lung cancer patients. "And shame on those who are perpetuating mistruths about lung cancer. The nature of this disease is so lethal and so silent, you don't realize you have it until it's metastasized." Fenton noted that the decision to screen for lung cancer — to get tested when no symptoms are present — should be based on several factors. These include: the patient's family history; exposure to radon and secondhand smoke; and whether, how much, and for how many years a woman has smoked. Fenton added that former smokers are always at elevated risk, but that the risk decreases with time. Depending upon the patient's history, a low-dose spiral CT scan, which can detect tumors the size of a pea, should be ordered, not a chest x-ray, which shows only larger masses. Referring to chest x-rays as "obsolete," Fenton added, "Many in the medical community are not as informed as they could be. The majority of calls to our 800 number are people who were misdiagnosed with bronchitis, put on antibiotics for four months, and then told, 'You have lung cancer. Go home and put your affairs in order.' "Peter Jennings and Dana Reeve [a former smoker and nonsmoker] represent the true face of lung cancer," continued Fenton. "We want this disease looked at in its entirety. Until then, mortality rates will remain high." | ||
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