Staging lung cancer

[Crafty57]

Hi all, so I had my biopsy last week today they had an MDT meeting. My cancer nurse phoned and said I have T2B N3MO MUTATION PDL1 expression.

Does anyone know what this means, please be gentle with me as I’m so scared. I have a phone call tomorrow from the oncologist. I have told them I don’t want to know any time frame. I just want to get on with it. Grateful for any help. Thanks

[RoyCastleHelpline Partner Ask the Nurse Roy Castle]

Dear Crafty57

Sorry to hear you have confirmed lung cancer and it can be quite confusing and confronting when a diagnosis is given with medical terminology. It is all very new and can be very frightening not knowing what is happening next.

Hopefully the information below will provide support and you may be better informed to discuss this with your Oncologist tomorrow.

Staging of cancer can be between 0-4 ( it is encouraging that you are at the lower end of this) and is a way of determining the size, location and if any spread which helps direct the treatment plan that will give you the best outcome.

T stands for Tumour and T2B means that the Tumour size is between 4cm-5cm

N stands for Nodes (lymph) and N3 means there is some cancer in the lymph nodes, however

M stands for Metastasis (spread) and MO means there is NO spread outwith the lung, so that is encouraging.

This link is to our booklet titled' Managing your lung cancer diagnosis', where it explains the staging and what happens next:

roycastle.org/app/uploads/2...

There are some detailed breakdown of staging if you wish to look at this from Cancer Research UK:

cancerresearchuk.org/about-...

PDL1 expression is a protein that tricks the immune system so that it does not attack the cancer cells, and there are new treatments called Immunotherapies that block this protein and allows the immune system to kill the cancer cells.

Immunotherapies are different to chemotherapy, can be less toxic and fewer side effects.

This is our information leaflet on this:

roycastle.org/app/uploads/2...

It is worth knowing that there are some people who are stage 4 and have been in treatment with Immunotherapy or targeted therapies and have a reasonable quality of life up to and past 5 years since their diagnosis of stage 4. Thankfully treatments have improved and there are many encouraging and inspiring stories from those with lung cancer under our article titled 'Like Me'

roycastle.org/campaigns/lik...

Do continue to talk to your family and friends and if looking anything up on the Internet, we would advise that you only look at evidence based approved sites:

roycastle.org

cancerresearchuk.org/ and

macmillan.org.uk/

Please feel free to contact us after your appointment if you want to go over anything, you can either email us at [e-mail] or call our freephone nurse led helpline number on 0800 358 7200

Kind regards

The Roy Castle Support Team

[Crafty57 in reply to RoyCastleHelpline]

Thank you very much for such a positive post x