About Half of Patients with Metastatic Lung Cancer Don’t Get Treatment, Study Finds
nytimes.com • • health
Key Points:
- A study published in JAMA Oncology found that over half of patients with metastatic lung cancer do not receive life-extending treatments such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or targeted therapy, with only a slight increase in treatment rates from 45% to 48% between 2006 and 2021.
- The research analyzed more than 250,000 Medicare patients, averaging 73 years old, highlighting that despite advances in lung cancer therapies, many older adults remain untreated.
- Barriers to treatment include late diagnosis due to the lack of early symptoms, underutilization of screening programs, complicated eligibility criteria, and delays in follow-up care after suspicious scans.
- Experts also point to factors such as access issues, patient fatalism, and shame as contributing to the low treatment rates among metastatic lung cancer patients.
- Lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer in the U.S., with over 110,000 new metastatic cases diagnosed annually, underscoring the urgent need to improve early detection and treatment access.
