Afterward, with the brain tumor mostly killed and his right lung removed, Davis struggled to regain a normal life while getting support from his wife and two daughters. He's still happy to be alive and now takes the time to talk to others about treating lung cancer while he pushes for greater recognition. He's even made public service announcements for organizations helping people deal with lung cancer. Smoking cessation is a small part of stopping it. The normal risk to smokers for lung cancer is 10 times more than nonsmokers.
Cigarettes cause lung cancer.
Sullivan is part of an institute-led group that recruited 3,000 current and former smokers for the Lung Cancer Screening study to see if a new diagnostic tool, called a spiral CT scan, can become a part of physicians' cancer care. Physicians already know that spiral CT scans can detect small lung cancers, often at the edges of the lungs. Conventional chest X-rays are still a very common diagnostic tool for lung cancer, even though about half of U.S. hospitals own spiral CT machines. The Lung Cancer Screening will not seek to track the spiral CT survival advantage, Sullivan said, but will serve to guide researchers who may consider doing a larger, more in-depth study. The overall survival rate is only 14 percent, but when the tumors are detected while they're still small and confined to the lung, nearly 50 percent of sufferers can be cured.