Vatican: Pope Leo XIV has lung cancer, Fox 13 interviews a UW Medicine expert

Our live look out at the Vatican at this hour, obviously the big news earlier today was the details about lung cancer with Pope Leo XIV. If you guys haven't been tracking this story, obviously this is impacting a lot of people. Anytime you're talking about a faith leader for millions of people around the world, there is a whole lot of conversation going on. Obviously, I want to get you guys caught up on what we know at this hour. the Vatican has put out details saying Pope Leo XIV has lung cancer and that the lower lobe of his right lung has been removed. That is the latest coming in from the Vatican at this hour. We, of course, want to kind of get a better idea of what exactly this means. The good news is we are talking about somebody who is with the Vatican. It means they're likely getting some of the best medical treatment available. But what does this mean in layman's terms? As we try to figure out together, I want to bring in Dr. McGarry Houghton, UW Medicine pulmonologist. Dr. Houghton, first, I just want to say thanks for jumping in with us on such short notice. Very welcome. So, I guess I'll ask you the details. Something like this comes out, we hear lung cancer, we hear a portion of a lung, or the lower lobe is how they refer to it, removed. For those who may be in this profession, that probably is pretty standard procedure as far as terminology. But for those of us in the real world, I mean, what exactly does that mean when we hear about a chunk of the lung removed? Yeah, the easiest way to think about it is there's a lung nodule that usually means it's somewhere under three centimeters. And if they can remove it, removing a smaller amount of lung tissue, they would. But the easiest way sometimes to ensure you get all the cancer is to remove one of the segments or one of the lobes. So the right lower lobe happens to be the largest one you have. it's between 25 and 30% of your lung function, but it's a straightforward lung resection. In this particular case, it was done by video-assisted scope, which is a minimally invasive technique where they can remove the right lower lobe just through a few small incisions, and patients recover from that quite quickly. And removing the right lower lobe for a small nodule has very good outcomes, which we'd hope be the case here. For our viewers at home, I brought back up images coming out from the Vatican as we keep an eye out there. You know, one of the things that I heard is that they're also going to be testing lymph nodes, trying to figure out a stage of cancer. I assume that's protocol, but what can they learn from those tests? Staging lymph nodes is very important. So removing the tumor, you know, we don't have details of its size, we know it's a lung adenocarcinoma, which is the most common type of lung cancer. If there is lymph node involvement, that would advance the stage and it may require additional therapies for the pope in the future. But I think that the main hope would be that there are not lymph nodes involved because, as you mentioned, that's a routine practice. You sample the lymph nodes when you take out the right lower lobe. So obviously, as we think about how this works, more testing needed. I guess the question then becomes chemotherapy. Is that something that could potentially be on the horizon? A lot of this does sound quote unquote standard, but obviously when we're thinking about a pope, we're also talking about age. Does this impact differently based on someone's age? It can. I just want to be clear, Matthew. I think from what we're hearing from the Vatican that this was a small, limited-stage nodule, the right lower lobe resection should be curative. It's likely the lymph nodes would be negative, and that would not require any additional treatment at all. Gotcha. So this is more precautionary. Right. If there are lymph nodes involved, that changes things a little bit. But I think the outcome here should be very good. And surgical resection for early-stage cancers, even when they do involve, minimally involve the lymph nodes is very, very good. He is not that old by lung cancer standards. The most common decade to be diagnosed with lung cancer is your eighth one. So I think that he is a sort of normal age for a lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. And most people are born with a lot more lung function than they need. So tolerating the loss of his right lower lobe would be expected that he would do relatively well with that now obviously uh we don't usually know the medical records of of everybody but when you become the pope we start learning a lot more backstory i know that it was pointed out that at one point in time he had a typhoid fever and this many years ago i'm looking over my notes here i think it was 1985 so we're talking decades ago but we know that it required hospitalization so i guess when you have a past history of anything like that, hospitalizations, things that affected your lungs once upon a time. Does that change any of the math here or is this pretty much standard treatment regardless of who would get something like this? Not specifically for typhoid fever. There certainly are pieces of medical history that change the way you think about this and treat it. With lung cancer, the number one risk factor by still remains cigarette smoke consumption. So people who've smoked cigarettes have a much higher risk of lung cancer than those who have not. It's important to note that the increasing demographic is lung cancer in never smokers. And that's really specifically lung adenocarcinoma, the type that the Pope had. I do not know the Pope's smoking history, but that is an increasing problem that we're dealing with is seeing lung cancer in people who have not previously smoked cigarettes. Well, I do want to ask you a little bit about what we can take away from this. Like, there's a reality uh we know that the pope is getting his medical treatment but there's a likelihood that folks that are listening to you and i talk right now maybe need to get checked so i guess as we get to this stage where we can maybe turn a negative into a positive for our viewers like what are the risk factors what are the things we should be thinking about because so many times i've heard people say you know they never smoked a day in their life and then they had lung cancer like what should we be watching for what should we be aware of that's a great question the the take-home messages is that overall, this is a good thing. Lung cancer, when it's diagnosed at its earliest stages and surgically resected like this, has five-year survival rates of around 80% to 85%. When it's diagnosed after it's already metastasized or spread to another part of the body, that number is less than 10%. So identifying lung cancer early is by far the best way to deal with it. And for people who are eligible for lung cancer screening here in the U.S., I would encourage them to get it. This population is between the ages of 50 and 80 and have a smoking history. And I would encourage them to speak to their physicians about having lung cancer screening because it's been proven to identify cancers at an early stage and to increase survival. So that's really the best bet. As for your question about the never smokers, we're still working on that. We are trying to understand which populations are at really increased risk there. They don't qualify for, for screening at this point, but that's something I think you should continue to watch in the future. Now, for those who don't know, I know I introduced your work, but you also happen to lead the cancer research program over at Fred Hutch. So a lung cancer research program, I should say. So obviously when we hear Fred Hutch, when we hear cancer, we understand that a lot of things are happening in our area. I'm just curious, you know, from, from your standpoint, where are we at right now in a lot of these conversations about detection changes, obviously always happening behind the scenes. What should we be paying attention to coming out of your guys' lab? In the early detection space, the flavor of the month is blood-based assays or liquid biopsy that can tell you whether or not a lung nodule is malignant or benign. There are some companies in this, Guardian and Grail, that are making assays. We have done a lot of this research here at the Fred Hutch. We have our own assays we're trying to develop to eventually get to commercialization. I think you will see in the next five years, there will be companion diagnostics where someone will have a blood test. This might try to detect multiple types of cancer. It might be more lung cancer specific that will partner with the CT scans that we use now for lung cancer screening. And that's something that we're quite involved in here at Fred Hutch. Wow. It's incredible to hear stuff like that because that would almost sound science fiction when I was younger, knowing that I had many friends and family affected by cancer, a few touched by lung cancer as well. So that does kind of sound like science fiction. It's fantastic to hear that that's unfolding here. You know, I always like to create a little space. I know that you got a chance to talk about early detection, why it's important that people get checked. But I always like to kind of just clear out and ask you, what am I not asking you? You're the expert. I know we brought you on to talk about the Pope, but we can let you go in any direction. What should our viewers be thinking about when they hear about this today? I'm going to go back with lung cancer screening because I want to tell you that of all of the people in the United States who are eligible to receive lung cancer screening, only about 10% of them actually receive it. This is not at all the case with mammography for breast cancer or even colonoscopy for colon cancer screening. Patients do simply not get it. And so it's up to their family members and their friends to encourage them to do this because we can't really help people if we can't get them in the screening programs to start with. And I think that's by far the number one thing we can do to improve outcomes for lung cancer here in the States for the next several years. It is very appreciated, Dr. McGarry Houghton with Fred Hutch and UW Medicine. Really appreciate you jumping in. Again, as I noted, short notice, you know, we got the breaking news about what was going on with the Pope. You jumped right on with us. I do hope that it helps some folks out there. Maybe it changes something. I'll be honest with you. Sometimes I'm excited just the idea that even if one person, you know, gets checked that wouldn't have otherwise checked. I feel like you and I did our job today. So thank you. Thank you. A pleasure.