Lung and Esophageal Cancer Center
The Lung Esophageal Cancer Center is staffed by a team of board certified doctors from the departments of pulmonology, hematology and oncology, thoracic surgery, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, and nuclear medicine, and exclusive coordinators. We apply cutting-edge technology and techniques to the treatment of cancer in order to improve diagnosis, testing, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, and we follow exceptional treatment protocols by maintaining clear communication between departments. We are also developing and applying new treatment methods to provide rapid and appropriate treatment to patients, in order to embrace a leading role in treating lung and esophageal cancer.
Main Service
Specialties: lung cancer, esophageal cancer
Strengths
As a world-class hospital for the surgical treatment of lung cancer, our cancer center has shown exceptional surgical results.
- Performed the most lung cancer surguriesin Korea in the last 10 years
- Perform 1/3 of the esophageal cancer surgeries in Korea
- Increased the percentage of minimally invasive thoracoscopic surgeries compared to more invasiveopen surgeries (58% thoracoscopic vs. 42% open in 2012).
- Achieved the lowest postoperative prevalence and mortality rate, shortest hospitalization, and lowest surgical cost in Korea.
- Embraces a multidisciplinary treatment practice in which professors from each department discuss appropriate treatment for 10-15 cases three times per week.
Diagnostic methods
Chest X-ray, Chest CT, sputum test, bronchoscopy, fine needle aspiration biopsy, positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT), bone scan, brain MRI, bronchoscopic ultrasound, mediastinoscopy
Latest treatment methods
Interventional bronchoscopy, surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy (3-dimensional conformal radiotherapy; 3DCRT), intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) tomotherapy, body stereotactic radiotherapy (SBRT), proton therapy)
Recent trends in clinical research
Due to advances in molecular biology, “molecular targeted therapy,” which blocks a specific molecular pathways, has grown in popularity. Samsung Medical Center is currently performing studies on molecular targeted therapy in conjunction with other major hospitals to maximize treatment efficacy for inoperative lung cancer patients. However, since the first step of molecular targeted therapy is to conduct an analysis of cancer cell genes, molecular targeted therapy cannot be implemented without specific genetic testing. To accomplish this, the Lung Esophageal Cancer Center is conducting studies on targeted gene analysis using CancerSCANTM, a next-generation cancer genome diagnostic technology independently developed by the Samsung Genome Research Institute. This new technology can check for over 500 mutations in over 380 targeted genes in a single test (http://sgi.samsunghospital.com). This important advantage makes Samsung’s Lung Esophageal Cancer Center ideal for research regarding molecular targeted genes and the therapeutic agents derived from them. We are confident that this research will lead rapidly to new tools for the treatment of lung and esophageal cancer.
Other resources
In order to improve treatment results and contribute to patients' quality of life, we are developing, and adopting chemotherapy protocols that enhanced drug effectiveness while minimizing side effects. Our active participation in domestic and international clinical research gives our lung cancer patients the opportunity to benefit from the most up-to-date chemotherapy techniques, and we operate a daytime unit for our outpatients to minimize inconvenience they must experience during the standby period for chemotherapy.