What's the difference between non-small cell lung cancer & small cell lung cancer? | Norton Cancer

John T. Hamm, M.D., Medical Director of the Norton Cancer Institute Research Program, answers the question, what is the difference between non-small cell lung cancer and small cell lung cancer?

One of the important differences in lung cancers, to break it down into two categories: there's what we call non-small cell lung cancer and there's small cell lung cancer and for thirty or forty years we've divided them that way and the reason is because small cell lung cancer grows very fast, divides very fast and surgery even for early disease, is generally not an option. It's already spread by the time the surgeon takes it out or about the time the patient recovers. So, they stopped doing surgery on small cell lung cancer a long time ago. On the other hand, small cell lung cancer responds very well to chemotherapy.

It shrinks very quickly and we get dramatic responses. If someone just has a limited a small cell lung cancer we can cure them with the combination chemotherapy and radiation.

If they have extensive, meaning it's spread somewhere else (small cell lung cancer) we can't cure it but we can significantly prolong their survival by treatment as well. Non-small cell lung cancer, which is the more common one with eighty percent of lung cancers, is approached for surgically and then with either radiation or chemotherapy or chemotherapy alone. The other thing the past two or three years about non-small cell as we've been able to break it down even smaller groups.

There's the adenocarcinomas and the squamous cell carcinomas and the others and some of those have genetic mutations and there are drugs for specific mutations

For some of these non-small cell lung cancers, oral drugs you take by mouth at home, very few side effects and work very well to control the disease so it's important if you have a non-small-cell for your tumor to be tested for genetic mutations to see if any of those drugs are applicable for you.


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