Statistics for lung cancer are shocking. It’s our number one cancer killer, but did you know it killed someone every hour last year? It has the lowest survival of Australia’s top 5 common cancers (20% alive 5 years after diagnosis). It is the cancer of shame and stigma, an unintended effect of anti-tobacco advertising and blame-shifting from corporations to their addicted victims. It causes the highest level of distress, anxiety and depression of any common cancer - 50% versus 20%. For this disease, our government funds 6 lung cancer nurses.

It is devastating indigenous Australians, with twice as many living with lung cancer and twice as many of those dying early.

It will cost our economy almost $1 billion a year going forward because it is so common, so we may as well make the investment in prevention and early detection to save lives.

We’ve seen great advances in treatment of early lung cancer, but we rarely see lung cancer early. Keyhole surgery is effective at curing lung cancer with quicker recovery and lower cost. Small tumours can be cured with a smaller lung operation than previously thought. For people who can’t have surgery, stereotactic radiotherapy is not only more effective, but cheaper and quicker than standard radiotherapy.

The proven intervention we don’t have is lung cancer screening. That can detect lung cancer early in 70-80% of cases. We could save 12000 lives over the next 10 years, and we need a quality registry, and more lung cancer nurses to ensure that happens.
 

Associate Professor Gavin M Wright
Research and Education Lead for Lung Cancer, Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre Alliance
 

As the Research and Education Lead for Lung Cancer, Associate Professor Gavin M Wright has publicly advocated for people living with lung cancer, having presented the VCCC submissions to the Senate Select Committee into Funding for Research into Cancers with Low Survival Rates and more recently, to the Cancer Australia Lung Cancer Screening Enquiry. As Director of Surgical Oncology at St Vincent's Hospital and as an academic thoracic surgeon, he has facilitated and conducted research and participated in several major international clinical trials in lung cancer. He has spent the last 20 years advancing surgical techniques and training current and future surgeons to improve the lives of people living with lung cancer.