Pope Leo XIV's lung cancer diagnosis: What comes next?

You guys, welcome back into Philadelphia Live. You're taking a live look out in Rome and that's because all eyes are on Pope Leo. We hear that he underwent surgery and he's also been diagnosed with lung cancer. This surgery apparently removed pieces of his lung and that's supposed to help him with his recovery. So then from there, a lot of people hear that new breaking news today that he was diagnosed and they wonder what does that mean? Will he survive this? What does recovery look like for a lung cancer patient, especially for someone who's undergone this type of surgery? And I want to tell you right now, I have come to find out this is actually fairly common. And from there, I thought, well, it's really important for all of us to know what someone who's going through this, you know, would actually experience what that fight looks like firsthand. So I wanted to give you guys this interview. You're going to hear from a thoracic surgeon whose name is Dr. Chai and he talks a little bit more about, you know, just the diagnosis itself, what you need to know and then also how would you know that you should get checked out. Guys, I want you to take a listen in. Dr. Chai, I really appreciate you making some time for us on Philadelphia Live. I think you have probably been talking to other media, maybe Temple in general has been probably seeing that a lot of journalists are just shocked by this information that we are getting in today. So, I mean, can we talk with the very basics, the Pope being diagnosed with lung cancer? I mean, how rare, how common is it here in the U.S.? Well, lung cancer as a whole is the leading cause of cancer-related death still. And so it's certainly been much more prevalent since smoking, you know, there's high rate of smoking. Certainly since that has come down in the recent years. The rate has probably decreased. But the rate of detection has probably increased quite a bit because we have increased numbers of CAT scans being done for reasons outside of just looking at the lungs, people showing up to the emergency room, and people have a cough, whatever it may be. They end up getting a CAT scan, and they have an incidental lung nodule that's identified, and then it ends up being cancer. And then on top of that, we've developed a pretty robust lung cancer screening program where eligible patients who are either current or former smokers within certain age ranges do end up getting lung cancer screening CTs and more earlier stage cancers are being detected. And so, you know, while the rates may have come down, the rates of detection have actually probably gone up a little bit more recently. I mean, why? You kind of touched on it a little bit, but why? Well, some of the risk factors for developing lung cancer traditionally are smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke. Other risk factors that are not as commonly discussed are exposures to things like radon, especially here in Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia area, there's high levels of radon, and that is a risk factor for developing cancer. Other things are just exposure to toxic substances, items like asbestos for patients who maybe have worked in the shipyards in the past and then now we know a lot more about patients who actually have never smoked before which is the biggest risk factor. They have certain genetic mutations like the EGFR mutation that are more common in certain populations that end up leading to the development of lung cancer. I have heard about that too where we're seeing people who say they've never smoked before even younger people popping up and saying that they're coming out with these diagnoses as well. And that makes me think, are there certain signs that maybe something you would have to go through, certain symptoms where you would know, hey, I should go to my doctor and tell them I need to be tested? How would you know? Yeah, the unfortunate thing is a lot of times the patients that I see are actually asymptomatic from lung cancer. You know, there are some nonspecific things like patients might develop a cough, you know, they might have some, you know, shortness of breath, maybe some, you know, nonspecific pain that can be chalked up to something else. You know, maybe they got a cold recently or, you know, they banged their chest, you know, they tripped and fell into something. But unfortunately, a lot of the signs are nonspecific and a lot of patients end up being asymptomatic. Like I mentioned before, you know, a lot of these end up being discovered incidentally. People who are going to the emergency room for one reason or another they get a CAT scan or a chest x-ray um maybe you know they actually hurt their shoulder and uh they got an x-ray to look at it and it just kind of caught the top of the lung and they and they saw a nodule there so all these end up being found incidentally and unfortunately there's not a lot of good signs um uh but you know if you do have things like family history if you were a former smoker uh those signs shouldn't be ignored because the possibility of there being lung cancer is there and so there are programs eligible for lung cancer screening but if you're concerned you should get checked out and i think arguably there are some forms of cancer that we talk about more than others so for example it's october breast cancer awareness month and i think it's understandable what would happen if you are diagnosed with breast cancer maybe you would go through mastectomy or double mastectomy with lung cancer i don't think a lot of people understand what the steps would be to get it out of your system or remove it from parts of your lung i heard that the pope had to undergo surgery to remove part of his right lung do you know a little bit more about how deep that surgery goes yeah that's actually a great point and i'd like to kind of go back to the original thing that you said uh this month is breast cancer awareness month november is actually lung cancer awareness month um so you know uh and to your point a lot of people know about breast cancer getting their mammography, getting screened for that. And the corollary to that is that lung cancer screening does exist for former smokers or current smokers within a certain age range. So that is a possibility. With regards to the specific treatments, it really depends on the stage and the type of cancer that is in the lungs. Earlier stage cancers are treated with surgery. And the type of surgery that he got from what I read and from what's been released. It seems to be a right lower lobectomy. And it sounds like he got it minimally invasively with a video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. So that's a couple small incisions, and they removed the portion of his lung where the nodule was because it was cancerous. Lobectomy, or removal of one lobe of the five that everybody has, has traditionally been the standard cancer operation. More recently, there's been more data and information that suggests removing a smaller subset or a sublobar resection, either a segmentectomy or a wedge, may be suitable, but that really depends on the size, the characteristic of the cancer, the stage, and making sure that there's no spread anywhere else amongst other things. But it sounds like he got a lobectomy which has traditionally been a standard cancer operation and i want to remind everybody that this is information that we are learning about in real time so we don't have all the details just yet and dr chai i understand that the pope is not your patient however for anyone who may have to go through this soon or they've got a family member and they heard that they've got this kind of surgery booked for them coming up as well soon I guess, how long does recovery typically take, and then what kind of toll does it take on the body? Yeah, you know, as I mentioned before, it sounded like he got video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery or with small incisions, minimally invasively. That has, you know, been the traditional minimally invasive approach. Now, a lot of people are using the robotic-assisted platform, which is very similar with small incisions, but with the robotic assistance. For patients that undergo minimally invasive surgery, you know, the expected recovery is that people are in the hospital for a few days maybe up to a week depending on you know other factors like you know making sure they can eat their strength is up amongst other things but a lot of patients are out of the hospital within a few days and for my patients and a lot of my colleagues patients the expectation is really that you know even the evening of surgery or the day after surgery patients are up walking around and trying to engage physically, because one of the most important things is for the lungs, the remainder of the lungs to be puffing and puffing, expanding, filling that space to prevent collapse or any other complications like pneumonia, which can happen after lung surgery. From a recovery standpoint, you know, a lot of people are really back on their feet, doing their activities of daily living, walking around, using stairs, walking their dogs, you know after a week or two um and then after you know uh six to eight weeks people are almost back to where they were people uh but some of my patients have gone out for runs um they've participated in races around town uh you know they go back to work um some people do really strenuous work um and they're able to get back to that part of the part of the determining factor for that is you know do they have any other medical problems are they physically fit to start with and some of our preoperative testing does help us gauge that but for a fit person to have undergone a lung resection surgery I would expect that he would make a good recovery. Well we're all hoping and praying for it we'll wait as the days and weeks go on we would love to see him make a return to the public eye but in the meantime definitely just rest do some of the work as you were saying to make sure those lungs are still working but definitely rest as well. Dr. Chai I appreciate your time here with us on Philadelphia Live to break it down to anyone who's just now getting the news and they want to know what he may be going through and what that road to recovery looks like still ahead so this helps us out and you know like I said we appreciate the information no problem thank you for having me no problem see you later oh you guys so yeah that interview that I had with Dr. Chai was very informative I want to let you know too that those of you guys who are looking forward to what this recovery process truly looks like for him say right now the vatican has not made any statement whether he would pursue chemotherapy or any other therapies as a result of this test they say they're still looking forward to getting those results back in but it was a successful surgery and as you can hear from dr chai it could just take a little bit of time for him to really get back up and operating at the normal capacity that he does and blessing people as he does but of course they also said that they are expecting him to maybe be up already walking around, maybe even talking in order to make sure that he's still working those lungs.