Robotic lung cancer surgery & NGMC next-day recovery guide

Heather, welcome back. So the Vatican says Pope Leo had a peaceful night in a hospital there where he is recovering from lung surgery. The Pope was diagnosed with lung cancer. This was on Tuesday after a procedure to remove a cancerous mass. So Catholics around the world and in Rome, everyone is praying for a swift recovery. Some even showing up to the hospital to pray as well. He is expected to be in the hospital for at least a week as he recovers. The Vatican says he started walking and he has resumed a diet. So many people at home are wondering what does this look like? We want to bring in Dr. Karen Gersh here who is with the Northeast Georgia Physicians Group to talk a little bit about this. First of all, thanks so much for joining us on this Thursday. It's good for you to be with us here. Break down what does this mean to the average person when they hear of this surgery and of the recovery? What does this mean? So thank you for having me. I think this is a very important topic. So Pope Leo was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, which is the most common type of lung cancer. And it was found on a surveillance screen, a CAT scan. He's a lifelong nonsmoker. And it just shows that any of us, even the Heavenly Father, can become diagnosed with a lung cancer. And the key for him is that it was found before he was having symptoms. So this was an asymptomatic finding. We don't want to have symptoms of lung cancer and have that be the reason why we find it, because at that point, these cancers are very well advanced. So screening is how we detect cancers early so we can get folks through surgeries and they can go about a normal life. And at Northeast Georgia, we are able to offer these surgeries using robotic technologies and folks go home the very next day. 90, almost 99% of our patients go home the very next day after a lung cancer surgery, the same surgery that the Pope had. All right, talk a little bit about the robotic assisted lung cancer surgery. What does that look like and what does the recovery look like from that? So for Pope Leo, the public announcement was that he was gonna be in the hospital recovering for about five to seven days. That's not how it works up here at Northeast Georgia. Most people go home the very next day because we're using tiny incisions. We don't make large incisions to put our hands inside of people's chest anymore. Those days are over for the most part. So we're able to do the surgery through very small, minimally invasive incisions. It's less traumatic, no blood loss, hardly any blood loss, no real infections, no problems. And you're able to get up and start walking that night. The next day you go home, a couple days later, you're driving your car. So it's a huge change. We're offering these surgeries for 88-year-olds and 87-year-olds. And that was never the case before now because those folks simply could not tolerate such a surgery. But with this minimally invasive approach, they certainly can. Walk us through, I know you said that the key is to finding this before you start seeing symptoms. But what are those symptoms? If those are people who are out there watching, what do you think that people should be able to look out for? We don't want to talk about the symptoms because we want you to show up long before that. We don't want you to have a headache where you have a metastasis to your brain or you're coughing up blood. No way. We want you to get screened. If you are the age of 50 to 80 and you're currently smoking or you've stopped within 15 years and you've smoked 20-pack year history, which means one pack a day for 20 years, one times 20 is 20, or two packs a day for 10 years, two times 10 is 20. So if you're 50 to 80, 20-pack year history, if you're still smoking or you stopped within the last 15 years, you absolutely qualify for a low-dose lung CT, get screened. Unfortunately, in this country, we have about 230,000 Americans each year are diagnosed with cancer. Most of them have advanced stage. 125,000 people per year die of cancer. That's 340 people a day or one person every four minutes. This is ridiculous. So if you have that history and you can get screened you have to get screened because if we find a cancer early in early stage cancer we can treat you and you have a phenomenal existence you go home the next day you can get on your tractor go out in your yard take care of your dog take care of your family so please get screened look at if you go to our website nghs.com forward slash lung nghs.com forward slash lung. You'll have information as to how to get to me and then also information on who can be screened. Dr. Gersh, before we let you go, I know you were talking about the age range. I'm just very curious because we're seeing younger people smoking when it comes to vapes and just different tobacco products. Does that have any impact on the timing of when people should get checked? We're seeing, you know, unfortunate people as young as 15, 16 years old using those products and inhaling that smoke. That is a incredibly important question that you just asked. Because we know that vaping, we don't have the epidemiological studies, we don't have a long history with it yet to truly see how bad it is. But all of us who do what I do know that it's bad. So we don't have a direct correlation with cancer quite yet. And that has not allowed us to change the recommendations for screening. but i suspect it's going to happen in the future dr gersh thank you so much it is a conversation that it's difficult for some but as you said make sure if you know you have that history with smoking that you were taking those steps so you guys can find it early and get to it before it spreads and before it is too late we appreciate your wealth of knowledge i'm very happy to be with you and uh just get yourself screened protect yourself and live a wonderful life all right thank you so much and happy Thursday