Good News: New Lung Cancer Treatments Have Experts Optimistic

With COVID- 19 (understandably) dominating most of the headlines, other stories from the world of health care can oftentimes get lost in the shuffle. But there have been some encouraging studies coming from the health industry as of late. One of those specifically pertains to Lung Cancer treatments.

The study shows that mortality rates have seen a sharp decline in the most common type of lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Experts in the field say this goes hand in hand with the Food and Drug Administration's rubber stamp on a number of therapies that have been implemented for NSCLC over the past few years.

The new study (done in men) indicates that researchers have seen a dramatic decrease in death from NSCLC as a result of these new treatments. In men, the study shows that deaths from NSCLC had decreased by 6.3% between 2013 and 2016. The two-year survival rate also increased in this time period.

Experts note that the rapid decline in the mortality rate was due to a substantial decrease in people smoking in the last number of years, along with the improvements in new treatments.

More information on this study can be found on the National Institutes of Health's website.