Long-term survival with lung cancer is sometimes possible, especially when the disease is caught in the early stages, or if an advanced lung cancer responds to targeted therapies or immunotherapy.
Some people survive many years even with stage 4 lung cancer. A person only needs to glance at photos taken at one of the LUNGevity HOPE Summits to see images of not one, but groups of survivors who have lived with stage 4 lung cancer for over a decade. While these people may be the exceptions to the general rule about survival odds, it does happen, and improvements in treatment over the last decade, even more so since 2015, make this scenario more likely.
Distant metastases, such as when lung cancer spreads to the brain, can sometimes now be treated with the hope of long-term survival.
Even if a lung cancer is not curable, it is almost always treatable. And it's not just that advanced lung cancer is curable. The newer treatment options often have fewer side effects than conventional chemotherapy.
