WYFF4 of Greenville: Keisha Kirkland Extends Thanks For Support

On the last day of her treatment for stage three lung cancer, WYFF News 4 Weather Anchor Keisha Kirkland extended a video thank you to all viewers for the messages and calls of support.

Kirkland was diagnosed in November and shortly afterward underwent surgery to remove the upper right lung mass.

Go here to view what Keisha has to say in her own words.

An opinion from LA Times: Tobacco regulations are no regulations at all

A proposal to put cigarettes under FDA supervision is so limited that it's really a smoke screen for Big Tobacco.

This week, the U.S. Senate is considering legislation that would, for the first time, give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco products. Numerous anti-smoking and health groups support the legislation. So does this mean Congress is finally on the verge of stepping up to take on Big Tobacco?

Hardly. The bill in question was crafted, in part, by the nation's leading cigarette company, Philip Morris, as part of a deal worked out between the tobacco giant and an anti-smoking group -- the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The health groups supporting the legislation have been seduced by the few concessions that Philip Morris dangled before them and have lost sight of the long-term damage that this bill will do to the public's health.

The legislation would do a few good things, including requiring stronger warning labels on cigarette packages and limiting cigarette advertising directed at youths. But the bill's fine print contains numerous loopholes inserted to appease Philip Morris. In the end, it ensures that federal regulation of tobacco products will remain more about politics than about science.

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USA Today reports: Using CT scans to screen for lung cancer may carry risks

Lung cancer screenings may carry hidden dangers, researchers announced Saturday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Orlando.

The National Institutes of Health is running a large study to find out if screening patients with CT scans can save lives. Some doctors are already offering the screenings in the hopes of finding tumors early, when they might be more curable. Lung cancer kills more people than any other tumor, with 215,000 new cases a year and 162,000 deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.

But the scan's results aren't always clear or easy to interpret, leading to false alarms.
People who are screened have a 21% chance of being unnecessarily frightened by findings that initially seem suspicious, but turn out to be benign, says lead author Jennifer Croswell.

Yet the exams, performed with CT scans, can produce more than just anxiety, according to Croswell's report, a pilot study for the ongoing National Lung Screening Trial, which includes 50,000 patients.

Suspicious findings can lead to invasive follow-up exams, such as biopsies or even surgeries in which doctors crack open the chest to access to the lungs, Croswell says.

Out of 1,600 smokers and ex-smokers in the study who had the CT scans, 40 had real cancer, but eight had unnecessary surgery for non-cancerous conditions.

Yet Croswell can't say whether the screenings actually helped anyone. That's because the larger study hasn't gone on long enough to show whether screening saves lives, she says. And because lung surgeries are risky, she says it's possible for the screenings themselves to cause death.

CT scans also expose people to radiation, which increases the risk of cancer, says Peter Bach, a pulmonologist at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Other research has suggested that tumors found through screening could be much less lethal than lung cancers that are found because they cause symptoms, so that finding these slow-growing cancers may not help anyone. Also, longtime smokers or ex-smokers could die of other causes, such as heart attacks or strokes, long before their cancer becomes a threat.

In fact, people who get CT scans are 100 times more likely to get a false alarm then they are to die of lung cancer, says Bach, the author of a 2007 study on lung cancer screening.

The American Cancer Society does not recommend lung screenings and they are not covered by insurance, Bach says. Insurers do cover follow-up tests and lung cancer treatments.

Go here to see what other readers think.

Science Daily reports: Drug Combination Improves Outcome For Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

A new, international study found that the combination of two drugs delays disease progression for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results from the Phase III "ATLAS" trial were presented May 30 by Dr. Vincent Miller of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

The goal of the study was to determine whether adding erlotinib (Tarceva®), a targeted agent, to maintenance therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin®), an agent commonly used as a component of treatment for advanced NSCLC would delay disease progression. Maintenance therapy involves using one or more agents of a chemotherapy regimen, but not the entire regimen, to delay disease progression and possibly improve survival after patients have previously received stronger standard chemotherapy, which can have significant side effects.

"This is the first study to show the addition of erlotinib to maintenance therapy prolongs progression-free survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer," said Dr. Miller, a thoracic oncologist at MSKCC and one of the study's lead authors. "Knowing which patients will get the greatest benefit from this combination, based on the identification of biomarkers, will be an important next step in this research," Dr. Miller added.

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Science Daily reports: Activated Stem Cells In Damaged Lungs Could Be First Step Toward Cancer

Stem cells that respond after a severe injury in the lungs of mice may be a source of rapidly dividing cells that lead to lung cancer, according to a team of American and British researchers.

"There are chemically resistant, local-tissue stem cells in the lung that only activate after severe injury," said Barry R. Stripp, Ph.D., professor of medicine and cell biology at Duke University Medical Center. "Cigarette smoke contains a host of toxic chemicals, and smoking is one factor that we anticipate would stimulate these stem cells. Our findings demonstrate that, with severe injury, the resulting repair response leads to large numbers of proliferating cells that are derived from these rare stem cells."

Stripp said this finding could be related to the increased incidence of lung cancer in people with chronic disease states, in particular among cigarette smokers.

The findings were published in the advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of May 25.

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