study from the National Cancer Institute<\/a> found that the rate of lung cancer death can be significantly lowered if doctors screen smokers with CT scans instead of using x-rays.\u00a0 The reason?\u00a0 X-rays don\u2019t detect tumors in the lungs early enough \u2013 but high tech CT scans can find the growths at an early stage.<\/p>\nThe study made a lot of news, but the findings didn\u2019t surprise me. I just wish that the medical community would expand their findings to other areas \u2013 mainly screening for current cancer patients.<\/p>\n
When my husband was diagnosed with kidney cancer at the age of 40, our community hospital did an x-ray to be sure that the cancer hadn\u2019t spread to his lungs.\u00a0 We were euphoric to get the news that his lungs were clear.\u00a0 In the early stages of diagnosis, we were still in the panic phase and listened and believed whatever the doctors told us.\u00a0 Three weeks after his surgery, a radical nephrectomy to remove his entire kidney along with the tumor that had overtaken it, I had done a little more research.\u00a0 What I learned was that lung x-rays are notoriously unreliable in finding tumors in the lungs \u2013 whether it\u2019s lung cancer or some other metastatic cancer.<\/p>\n
I went back to our doctor, the urologist who had performed the surgery, and said that I felt that we needed a CT scan instead.\u00a0 He confidently waived me away.\u00a0 Silly woman.\u00a0 An x-ray is fine.\u00a0 CT scans use too much radiation \u2013 and the contrast is hard on the kidney (which was significant since my husband was now operating on one kidney).<\/p>\n
One thing you should know about me is that I\u2019m a lobbyist.\u00a0 I spend my working hours arguing.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty good at it \u2013 even sometimes to my detriment.\u00a0 And I wasn\u2019t convinced that our doctor was right.\u00a0 I told my husband we needed to get a second opinion.\u00a0 He agreed \u2013 after all, when you get a cancer diagnosis, getting a second opinion is just common sense.<\/p>\n
The second doctor we went to agreed with the first doctor.\u00a0 I should point out \u2013 fairly or unfairly, he too was a urologist. He said x-rays every six months would be a reasonable scanning regime for someone with my husband\u2019s diagnosis and prognosis.\u00a0 I reminded him that Chris\u2019s tumor was large and of an aggressive grade.\u00a0 He assured me that the chances of his cancer coming back were low.\u00a0 I was, at first relieved.\u00a0 But the nagging in the back of my mind wouldn\u2019t go away.\u00a0\u00a0 Everything I was reading and everything I was being told from the patient community said that we needed a CT scan.<\/p>\n
Almost by accident, I set up an appointment for a third opinion.\u00a0 I had been chatting with a friend who was on the board at another hospital and I mentioned my concern.\u00a0 Within a few minutes, I was confirming an appointment the next day with a new doctor \u2013 this time an oncologist.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t relieved when the third doctor agreed with me.\u00a0 I wish that an x-ray would <\/em>have been sufficient.\u00a0 I wish that the first two doctors were right and that my husband didn\u2019t have metastatic cancer in his lungs.\u00a0 But they were wrong. He did.\u00a0 We discovered this when we received the results from his first CT scan of the lungs. He’d probably had it the entire time, and it was just never caught because the doctors failed to do a CT scan.<\/p>\nI hope that this study for the NCI will be used more broadly.\u00a0 I hope that fewer patients will go through what we went through.\u00a0 I have no idea how long it would have been before they would have found the cancer in Chris\u2019s lungs.\u00a0 I can tell you that nine months after the initial CT scan found the tumors \u2013 an x-ray we had during treatment looking for fluid buildup still<\/em> showed no signs of tumors in his lungs.<\/p>\nIf we can agree to scan smokers for potential lung cancer, shouldn\u2019t we also make it standard to use the same technology to scan current cancer patients for potential metastasis?<\/p>\n
If we can agree to scan smokers for potential lung cancer, shouldn\u2019t we also make it standard to use the same technology to scan current cancer patients, including kidney cancer survivors, for potential metastasis?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[25,9,26,27,28],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-ct-scan","tag-kidney-cancer","tag-lung-cancer","tag-metastasis","tag-x-ray"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323,"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ackc.org\/jayedit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}