What Is Lung Cancer in the 4th Stage?

Stage 4 lung cancer is the most advanced stage of the disease. The prognosis of those with advanced lung cancer is not good. Doctors usually prescribe palliative care for those with stage 4 lung cancer.

Definition

• Doctors diagnose stage 4 lung cancer when tumors appear in the airway, or when tumors spread to the bones or another organ in the body.

Identification

• Doctors check the fluids covering the outer membranes of the lung, called pleural fluid, for cancer cells. If pleural fluids contain cancer cells, it is considered stage 4 lung cancer.

Significance

• Once the tumors leave the insides of the lung, surgery is no longer an option because the pleural fluids contain cancer cells.

Treatment

• Stage 4 lung cancer treatment aims to shrink tumors to manage symptoms and to slow down metastatic lung cancer. Options include chemotherapy, freezing the tumor (cryotherapy), and radiation treatment.

Prognosis

• The chances of surviving stage 4 lung cancer are very low. Only 1 percent of small-cell lung cancer patients are alive after five years. For non-small-cell lung cancer, the chances of surviving five years range from 2 percent to 13 percent.