Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the most common cancer affecting the industrialized world and affects the lives of thousands of people, including patients' friends and family, every year. The most common cause of lung cancer is long-term exposure to tobacco smoke. The occurrence of lung cancer in non-smokers, who account for as many as 15% of cases, is often attributed to a combination of genetic factors, radon gas, asbestos, and air pollution, including secondhand smoke.

The aim of this book is to give, in a clear and simple way, succinct information about all aspects of this type of cancer, with a stress on the practical side of its treatment. The book also details how care is likely to be organized and what patients can do to help themselves, both if they have the disease and also how to stop smoking.

Fully updated for this third edition, the book includes information on getting the best treatment and living with cancer, both of which are new approaches to the disease in the UK.

Stephen Falk is a consultant clinical oncologist based in Bristol with sessional commitments to Yeovil. Major clinical interests are thoracic and gastro-intestinal malignancies. Interest in research was stimulated as a MRC Clinical Scientist in Norman Bleehens' unit in Cambridge where the MRC cancer trials unit was situated at the time. A MD related to lung cancer and scheduling of topoisomerase poisons with and without radiation is the basis of an on-going interest in chemo-radiation interactions.

He is lead doctor for Clinical Oncology in Bristol and clinical lead for research and development within the Bristol Haematology and Oncology centre and for the National Cancer Research Network locally in Avon Somerset and Wiltshire. He is also a member of the NCRI upper GI studies committees. Increasing research management activity is reflected in his current role as co-clinical director of the UK comprehensive local research network western.