in today's innovation in medicine we're learning about a new scan that's making
a big difference when it comes to the early detection of lung cancer I'm here
with dr. de Kamp and dr. what this is is a low dose CT scan so let's talk about
what that is exactly and how it works sure a low dose CT scan is a takes about
30 seconds to obtain images all the way through the chest so that we can
reconstruct them and look at every three millimeters of the lung so if you're a
small nodule in the lung it's hard to hide by using a lower dose than we would
first standard CT scan we're making it safer so something that you could have
on a more regular basis say once a year and that's important because people who
are smokers or even former smokers are at higher risk for lung cancer so we've
known for a long time that smoking is the major risk factor for lung cancer
but we just haven't had a good tool to look at those patients at risk used in
this higher risk population this finds lung cancer at an early stage and if you
find lung cancer in early stage it's easier to treat why is this innovation
so important well it can't lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of women
and men it kills more people than breast cancer colon cancer prostate cancer
pancreas cancer added together if we can triple the survivability of lung cancer
it's going to affect it benefit way more people in the near term and there are
things you can do of course you can never smoke or you can stop smoking but
if you already even incurred that risk then early detection is the best
medicine if you will that message really resonates with former smoker Fred
Shapiro I started smoking and I kept at it two
to three packs a day for 30 years I quit in 97 one day Fred found himself
coughing up blood his doctors sent him to get screened
using this technology which immediately found the problem
he had a biopsy and it did demonstrate that he had a form of lung cancer called
squamous cell lung cancer the second most common kind that we take care of
these days when I found out that there was something there I was shocked there
was just an assumption if I had cancer I would feel worse than this at this point
I was fairly nervous panicked scared fearful despairing you know pick your
word the good news was that Fred's cancer was caught at an early stage and
doctors could get rid of the cancer by removing two lobes of his lung two days
after I got home dr. de Kamp called me and said friend you're done no radiation
no chemo your lymph nodes all came back clear you're cured
that meant Fred could stop worrying about cancer and focus on his favorite
hobby and I really just love cycling and you're moving and you're balanced and
it's effortless it's like you're floating kind of a nice thing to do I
can you know think clearly when I'm cycling so sailing like doing I feel
just like I did before I feel great only this time I don't have cancer which is
huge even though we took out 2/3 of his right lung he's very fit and functional
he's a real motivation to his peers and there's really no reason not to do it I
mean they don't give you a lollipop afterwards but other
it's just something to learn about other innovations in medicine head to our
website living healthy tv.com
after the break what can you do to kick the unhealthy habit of smoking and stick
with it the most important thing to do is make a commitment to quit and we're
recapping all the great advice we got today on living healthy