ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Lung cancer kills more people every year than colon, breast, and prostate cancer combined, accounting for one in five of all cancer deaths. And yet, because most cases are caused by smoking, there’s a stigma that if you get lung cancer, you deserve it. Ivanhoe tells us how this stigma hurts patients from diagnosis to treatment.
In the US, smoking causes as much as 90 percent of lung cancer cases, and that creates a stigma: if you get lung cancer, you deserve it because you chose to smoke.
Jenna Gibilaro, MD, Pulmonologist says, “Patients are really cruel to themselves, and they’ve been treated cruelly by people who love them. People who will even sit in the exam room and say, ‘I told you to stop smoking.’”
This stigma carries over to diagnosis, not everyone eligible for lung cancer screening get screened.
Doctor Gibilaro told Ivanhoe, “The last time that I looked, it’s maybe something like five to seven percent of people who are eligible. It’s awful.”
Even if a patient gets screened, they may not want to investigate further.
“There’s a big subset of people who are scared and they don’t actually take that leap. I think that for my practice, it’s probably about 40 percent,” explained Doctor Gibilaro.
Doctor Gibilaro has had some patients hide their diagnosis and treatment from their loved ones. She says, “The burden of overcoming that shame and that stigma, it’s so strong. They just can’t even face it.”
Most devastatingly, people diagnosed with lung cancer are almost three times more likely to commit suicide. But there is some good news.
Doctor Gibilaro says, “It’s not a death sentence anymore. If we catch it early, it’s curable.”
Beyond chemo, there are now therapies that have better long-term effects, and if the cancer is found early and small, surgery can cure it.
“It’s a much better menu of choices with better side effects and better outcomes,” Doctor Gibilaro told Ivanhoe.
So, if someone tells you they have lung cancer, remember your support can make a big difference.
Doctor Gibilaro says most insurance companies don’t cover lung cancer screenings for people under 50, even if they are high risk. So, for her patients, she orders chest X-rays instead, as those are always covered. While those are 2D images compared to a cat scan’s 3D image, it can still be helpful, and if there is something not right on the image, then a cat scan will be covered.
Contributors to this news report include: Marcy Wilder, Producer; Roque Correa, Editor.
Source:
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/lung-cancer/about/key-statistics.html
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/lung-cancer/about/key-statistics.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36901154/
* For More Information, Contact: Jenna Gibilaro, MD
