Guide for Lung Cancer Gene Tests Published
By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: April 05, 2013
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner
All patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma should undergo testing for EGFR and ALK mutations to determine their eligibility for targeted therapies, according to a jointly developed guideline from three organizations.
Patients should undergo EGFR testing at diagnosis of advanced disease or at recurrence or progression if they were not tested at earlier disease stages. ALK rearrangement testing is suggested by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, the College of American Pathologists, and the Association for Molecular Pathology.
Patients should not be excluded from testing because of smoking status or clinical characteristics, the guideline authors said in an article published online in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.