Lung Cancer: Scalpels, Beams, Drugs, and Probes

Ninety percent of the 149,000 people who will have lung cancer in the United States this year will die of their disease,¹ and the physicians caring for them must decide the best way to confront a bleak situation. The article by the Lung Cancer Study Group in this issue of the Journal² shows the limitations of two components (surgery and radiotherapy) of our triad of weapons in the treatment of lung cancer. In this prospective randomized clinical trial, postoperative adjuvant chest irradiation was given to patients with resected epidermoid (squamous-cell) carcinoma and positive hilar (N1) or mediastinal (N2) nodes in.