Lung cancer

1. Big picture

Lung cancer is the most lethal thoracic malignancy and is strongly linked to smoking. In the exam, recognize the pattern:

Older smoker/ex-smoker + persistent cough or change in chronic cough + hemoptysis + weight loss + recurrent pneumonia or nonresolving infiltrate → think lung cancer until proven otherwise.

The clinical workflow is:

Suspicion
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Chest X-ray, but normal X-ray does NOT exclude cancer
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Contrast chest CT
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Obtain tissue diagnosis
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Stage with CT/PET-CT ± brain MRI
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Classify: NSCLC vs SCLC
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Treat according to stage, histology, molecular profile, and performance status

Modern lung cancer management depends not only on histology, but also