My brother passed away from lung cancer on July 20, 2013 - he had learned he had lung cancer on June 23, 2013 - too late to receive any treatment or hope for a longer life. He was a perfect candidate to have had a CT screening for lung cancer, but neither he nor his doctors knew that. My brother had smoked for approximately 60 years and had tried to quit using group programs, nicotine replacement therapy, medications and even e-cigarettes, but was not able to quit until he received his lung cancer diagnosis and was at the point where he could barely breathe - which speaks to the terrible addictive nature of tobacco use.
His four children and their spouses, nine grandchildren, three sisters and countless friends miss him terribly! We need to do better for the victims of the tobacco industry - we need to make sure that primary care providers and the public know what the lung cancer screening guidelines are, and promote best practices for all lung cancer screening programs.
