Lung & Thoracic Cancer Care

Expert Lung Cancer Treatment in Boston

The Lung and Thoracic Cancer Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) offers you and your family a number of significant benefits:

• Exceptional multidisciplinary care
• Renowned expertise in minimally invasive surgery
• Advancements in medical oncology — tumor genotyping and clinical trials — and in radiation oncology with the CyberKnife stereotactic radiosurgery system
• Innovations in interventional pulmonology
• Shared decision-making
• Long-term, follow-up care and interest
• Access to state-of-the-art treatments tailored just for you

As an academic medical center, BIDMC offers key advantages to you through our experience and access to the latest diagnostic and treatment options — with a personalized approach. We excel in applying new minimally invasive techniques to tumors that were once inoperable. Our top priority is to improve your quality of life.

Types of Cancers We Treat

We specialize in diagnosing and treating lung cancer, as well as thoracic (chest) cavity cancers. We work with BIDMC colleagues in gastrointestinal (GI) cancer and in head and neck cancer to effectively treat esophageal cancer. We coordinate care with our Blood and Bone Marrow Cancer Program to treat thymus cancer.

Lung Cancers We Treat

Our lung specialists have expertise in treating these and all other types of lung cancer:

Screening & Diagnostic Services

Radiologists use an array of imaging options to diagnose and stage chest cancers. Our BIDMC thoracic radiologists are among the finest in the field in performing exams and evaluating results. If you have certain risk factors, your primary care doctor may suggest you have regular lung cancer screening tests.

Depending on your symptoms and needs, your pulmonologist (lung specialist) may order one or more of these tests:

Your pulmonologist uses these images to help classify tumors and abnormal cells, as well as to guide surgical therapy and treatment planning.

Multidisciplinary Thoracic Oncology Conferences

Our chest and thoracic specialists come together weekly to discuss each of our cancer cases. Up to 30 team members collaborate and discuss your particular cancer and the best treatment options for you. Together, we reach a consensus on a recommendation to best treat your cancer.

In our clinic, you’ll see all your necessary cancer specialists in one location — for your convenience and ease. You may meet with one or several doctors at the same time. They also remain available to one another for immediate consultation about your care.

There are many benefits to this approach:

• Enhances the accuracy of your diagnosis
• Promotes stage-based treatment, to guide the most appropriate care, based on the location and extent of your cancer
• Gives you the broadest range of treatment alternatives, including less invasive options when appropriate
• Customizes the care you receive
• Provides truly personalized service to answer your questions and address any concerns

Treatments We Offer

Medical oncology uses chemotherapy and other systemic medicines — such as hormones and biological therapy — to treat cancer.

Chemotherapy can be either systemic (treating cancer wherever it is located in the body) or intra-arterial (delivering the chemotherapy through a catheter directly into the artery supplying the tumor). The chemotherapy drug travels through the bloodstream to kill cancer cells. BIDMC has a specialized outpatient medical oncology unit for evaluation and treatment, as well as a specialized inpatient medical oncology floor to care for patients in the hospital who have cancer.

Tumor Genotyping

You may benefit from tumor genotyping with other tailored treatments. This is a type of personalized cancer therapy we designed to attack the genetic and immune structure of an individual tumor.

Most cancers are an accumulation of cellular defects (genes that have mutated or gone awry) that allow cells to divide and grow unchecked. For non-small cell lung cancer, the presence or absence of some of this identifiable genetic and/or immune alterations can help determine the timing and type of therapy to best treat it. BIDMC and the teaching hospitals in Boston do more of this type of genotyping than anywhere else in the country.

Radiation Therapy

Our specialists in radiation oncology (doctors who treat cancer with radiation therapy) are among the most experienced in the Boston area in using CyberKnife stereotactic radiosurgery to treat lung cancers.

Radiation therapy uses high-energy rays or particles to treat disease. High doses of radiation can kill cells or keep them from growing and dividing. Radiation therapy is a useful tool for treating cancer because cancer cells grow and divide more rapidly than many of the surrounding normal cells.

CyberKnife offers superior targeting accuracy with minimal exposure to surrounding healthy tissue. Its real-time, image-guided robotic technology continually tracks your movement and confirms the tumor location before delivering the beam. This makes it especially effective at treating hard-to-reach tumors and tumors that move when you breathe, such as lung tumors.

Our radiation oncologists also use intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) to treat thoracic cancer. IMRT features radiation beams of different intensity that conform to tumor size, shape and location to kill cancer cells, while sparing nearby healthy tissue.

Thoracic Surgical Care & Interventional Pulmonology

Our thoracic surgeons are leaders in their field — often successfully operating on tumors that other centers consider inoperable. You’ll benefit from our latest minimally invasive surgical techniques, which offer quicker recovery and less downtime.