Karen Loftus (Host): This is Community Connect: presented by Tampa General Hospital. I'm Karen Loftus. Joining us today is Dr. Mary Carolyn Vinson, a board-certified thoracic surgeon at Tampa General Hospital Crystal River, and also Tampa General Medical Group. She is here to talk about lung cancer today. Dr. Vinson, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Thanks for having me.

Host: You bring a decade of clinical experience in this space, so we know that we are in good hands for this discussion today. Let's jump right in by explaining the two types of lung cancer. In simple terms, can you tell us what those are?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: There are truly more than just two types of lung cancer, but the two most common types of lung cancer have kind of funny names. One's called non-small cell lung cancer, and the other is called small cell lung cancer. These were names that were designated years and years ago by what things look like underneath the microscope. One had small cells, one didn't.

Host: Okay. Makes sense.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Clever, right? So, more common is non-small cell lung cancer, and that makes up about 80% of the type of lung cancers we see. So when most people are talking about lung cancer, we're most often talking about non-small cell. However, small cell lung cancer is more associated with people that smoked in the past. It's way more aggressive, more often to metastasize. So if you had to pick a lung cancer, you don't really want small cell. Those are the two main categories.

For the majority of our discussion today, we're going to be mostly referencing non-small cell because that's kind of the more common type. And when we talk about things like staging, when people think, "Oh, what stage am I? I, IV?" Most people know the numbers. We're talking about non-small cell. Small cell lung cancer is staged and treated in a different way.

Host: Okay. Interesting And as you mentioned, the majority of people who are diagnosed with lung cancer are people who currently smoke or who have a history of smoking. But according to the American Cancer Society, one in five people who are diagnosed do not smoke, and they haven't smoked. How does someone get lung cancer if they don't smoke?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah. It can happen for a variety of reasons. We don't always know the reason. Sometimes it's something as simple as bad luck. Sometimes it's genetically related. We know that lung cancer does run in families, whether you've smoked or not. There are certain types of lung cancers that are genetically associated. Radon, believe it or not, is another common way. Not so common here in Florida, because we don't have basements. But if you've ever lived in the Northeast, we often check our basements up there for radon.

Host: Okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: and there's reasons behind it. It's associated with cancer, and lung cancer is one of those causes. Air pollution. One of our more common non-smoking and some even think the higher rate of—I guess we're seeing these patients at higher rates are young Asian women actually. There's some thought that this is either a genetically related component or even air pollution. So, there's a bunch of different ways that you can get lung cancer even if you've never smoked.

But far and away, that only makes up about 10% to 20%. So depending upon what you're looking at, one in five, 10%, 20%, it's still not the vast majority of people who unfortunately get the diagnosis of lung cancer. Most of the time, it is associated with a history of or active smoking.

Host: Now, what are some of the signs and symptoms that somebody should look out for, and at what point should they seek medical care?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. So, that's the scariest thing about lung cancer. Most of the time there are no signs and symptoms until it's very late.

Host: Okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: So by the time that you're experiencing weight loss and night sweats and coughing or coughing up blood or chest pain, unfortunately, you're usually stage III or greater. And so, that's what makes lung cancer so deadly. Not only can it metastasize quickly, it often has no signs. The lungs themselves don't have nerves. Now, the chest does, but the lungs themself don't. And so, it often takes a very large tumor or some blockage of an airway or something in order to have a sign or a symptom. So, that's why lung cancer is so scary.

Host: Wow. Now, when you talk about screening to maybe find out if you do have lung cancer, who qualifies to get screened? Because, as I understand it, there's specific high-risk criteria that you have to meet.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: That is true. So according to the US Preventative Task Force, which we keep updating, and they keep getting younger and younger, which is good. So most recently, if your age is 50 to 80, you are currently smoking, or you have a 20-pack-year history of smoking. And I'm going to break that down, because that's weird, 20—

Host: Yeah.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: What's a pack year, right? So if you smoke one pack a day for 20 years, that's 20 pack years.

Host: Okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Okay. But if you smoke actively or you have recently quit within the last 15 years and have at least that 20-pack-year smoking history, you qualify for lung cancer screening. And how does it screen? Most people think this is a chest X-ray. I get this commonly. Patients come into the clinic, like, "Well, I just had a chest X-ray. How come they didn't find this?" Chest X-rays, sputum cultures, like spitting into a cup and checking for cancer are not accurate, and that's been studied. Like, that's not a good way to detect lung cancer. The only way we can truly screen for lung cancer is with a low-dose lung cancer screening CT scan.

Host: Got it.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah.

Host: Now, when you mentioned this particular way of screening, can you walk us through what that looks like if somebody's getting screened?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Sure. So, usually, what happens is you have a conversation with your doctor. So, you need to have what's an actual conversation versus risks and benefits of lung cancer screening. It's called informed consent. That has to happen, talking about it, and you need to meet the criteria: 50 to 80, currently smoking, recently quit within the last 15 years, and at least a 20-pack-year history.

If you meet those criteria and you have that shared decision-making conversation, the next thing that happens is your doctor just literally orders a CT scan. And then, you take it to an imaging center, and you go in, and it takes a minute for the actual scan to happen. You literally lay down, zip, zip, and it's done. It doesn't require any IVs, no contrast. It's virtually painless, and it's pretty quick.

And all the different screenings out there that people think about, mammograms, colonoscopies, this is actually kind of one of the less, you know, invasive and simplest things that you can do, is to go in and get a CT scan.

Host: Okay. Now, is there any concern for radiation?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Sure. So, it does involve radiation. So, I get this asked a lot from my patients. Like, how much radiation? They get really gets freaked out. So, low-dose CT scans. So, it's a lower dose. It's not zero. So usually, we measure radiation in something called millisieverts. Now, I'm not a physicist. So, I can't break that down for you at all, but that's how we measure it. And so, what I tell patients is usually a low-dose CT scan is somewhere between 1 to 3 millisieverts. In Florida, this might be higher, but average just from the sunshine radiation, you get about 3 millisieverts a year.

Host: Oh, okay. Yeah. I feel like that's a good point of reference, especially for people in Florida.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah, we get more than that in Florida.

Host: We can make sense of that.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. Or if you're flying cross country in an airplane, you actually receive radiation, like any time you're getting close to the sun. So, it's actually not that much honestly. So, it's very small amount of radiation. Now, if you get multiple full dose CT scans through the year, that radiation can build up. So, the risk of the radiation isn't zero, but it is quite small in comparison. More than a chest X-ray, but less than some other procedures.

Host: I want to go back to people who qualify to get screened. And I have two questions, but I'll break them down one at a time. So, what if somebody just wants to be proactive about their health and they just heard this and they were like, "Well, I grew up in the Northeast and I had a basement, and I don't want to find out too late. Can I electively get screened and maybe like pay out of pocket or something like that?"

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: You could talk to your doctor and they could order a CT scan if they feel like there are certain risk criteria that don't fall into the US Preventive Task Force screening, the official screening. The difference between those two things is literally like you're saying, insurance. So with the criteria for lung cancer screening patients who fall into that category, most insurances will pay for their CT scan. So, it's very, very low cost out of pocket. Sometimes it's nothing, right? But if, you know, "My mom had lung cancer," "I was exposed to secondhand smoke," "I'm sure I had radon in my basement, "I want a CT scan," and have that conversation with your doctor. They can order it. You may have to pay money out of pocket to get the CT scan done. It doesn't mean you can't have it done, but the cost may change.

Host: Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. The other part of this is you were talking about how they keep lowering the age for this.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right.

Host: What's this process behind the scenes to get that criteria changed, and do you see it expanding anytime soon?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: So, it's a complicated formula. So, the way this works—and I am not on the US Preventative Task Force—but the way it is, is how many scans do we have to do to save a life? That's the idea behind it. Like, how many scans do we have to do to save a life, and in what age groups are we scanning and actually moving the needle?

And so, when they sit down at the table and they start looking, "Oh, we've got to scan 200 people to save a life" kind of thing, that's how they come up with the math. And so, you know, it's a little bit of who benefits most from this particular scan. So when they keep moving the age, 80 is still pretty much been that standard cutoff. Like, when you're 81 and you've been beyond 15 years, if there's not another reason to keep scanning you, we kind of stop.

Host: Okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: But it used to be 55, and so now down to 50. Yep. Just like with colonoscopy, it used to be 50, now it's 45, you know. Some of the thoughts are we want to save the lives of everyone who has cancer, but if we detect the lung cancer earlier in younger people, that's so many more years of life saved for younger people. So again, I don't know the formula for exactly how they figure that out, but they have recently, in the last couple years, reduced the age from 55 to 50.

Host: So as we're talking through this, we know that early detection is crucial. Can you expand upon, in this case of lung cancer, why it's so important for survival? And then, also, when you talk about treatment options too, like, what's available?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. Sure. So, this is where we get down to, like, the brass tacks of it, really. So, the earlier stage that we detect lung cancer, the cure rates go up. And for lung cancer specifically, the more advanced the stage, the survival rates—and when we talk about survival, we talk about five-year survival. So, we kind of measure it in five years. Especially five-year survival, five-year disease-free survival, these things are kind of our marks.

So when you go from stage I, so if you're looking at a early stage I lung cancer, all treatment options are usually available to those patients, and you're looking for cure, right? Cure is the key. And disease-free survival and actual cure rates are higher. So when you look back at these patients five years later, you know, upwards to 80%, 90% of them are still alive, if you have stage I treated lung cancer.

Host: Okay. So, just for stage I.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Just for stage I. Once you drop to stage II, it automatically drops you down to, like, 60% to 70%.

Host: Big drop.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Like, it's a big jump. And then, it drops down. Stage III, you get down to 30s and 40s. And then, stage IV, it's very variable. It depends on the whole picture of the things. And then, you know, options start to fall away because, you know, you show up and your disease is, you know, stage IV, then surgery's not really an option for you anymore.

Where when you come to the table with a stage I, then you have the option for surgery. You really don't have the indication for chemotherapy or any of those systemic treatments because it's still too early. So right then, we just have local therapy. And so, you know, that's the big difference why early detection is so important because survival rates fall off increasing stage.

And again, we're also talking about non-small cell, remember. Small cell is staged differently. So when we're having these conversations about stage I to stage IV, we're talking non-small cell lung cancers, which is more prevalent and more common.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for bringing it back to that.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah.

Host: Now, when you mentioned if you're at stage IV and that surgery's not really an option, is that because it's spread so much throughout the body that you can't do surgery and get all of it?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yes, that is true. But the other thing is anything is always risk versus benefit, right? All the time. So, you know, I'm going to kind of, you know, break it down how I break it down for my patients.

So in any time we're talking about cancer, whether it be lung cancer or liver cancer, it doesn't matter, we have to do three main things. We have to name it. What kind of cancer is this we're dealing with? Two, we got to stage it. What is our stage? And how we stage that, it varies on the type of cancer, but it might look like a CT scan, a PET scan, an MRI, you know, all the different studies. So, we stage it that way, and sometimes we biopsy different things to stage it. So once we've named it and we've staged it, then we can treat it.

And treatment depends on stage, no matter what cancer you're dealing with. So for example, if you're a stage I lung cancer, your treatment is going to fall into mostly the local category. And so, again, I'm going to break this down. So, there's two main types in which we treat lung cancer or any cancer. Local therapy. Local therapy means we're treating the spot.

Host: Yep.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: We're treating the tumor. We're treating the big, bad problem. That's local therapy. Local therapy is either surgery, which means we're cutting it out, or radiation, we're burning that spot. That's local. Systemic therapy is for treating your whole body. Every cell in your body is going to receive treatment against this cancer, and that can look like a bunch of different things. It can be chemotherapy, it can be immunotherapy, and it can be targeted therapy.

And so, sometimes we combine these two approaches for multimodal treatment. And when we're looking at lung cancer, backing up again, stage I, there's no indication now for stage I in our research that we need systemic therapy. We've just got a spot. It's contained. We know where it is. The treatment is going to be remove it or burn it. That's it. When you get to stage II, and this has changed fairly recently, like within the last five years, it used to be stage II lung cancers, we were still in the local treatment category.

Host: Okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: But as our treatments have improved with our newer medications, immunotherapies, and chemotherapies being more effective, we now treat upfront with systemic therapy for stage II lung cancers and come back and resect it. And this is what we do in breast cancer.

And so, you know, lung cancer research lags a little bit behind. It has a stigma around it. Smokers, you know, like, "You deserved it." No one deserves to have a lung cancer.

Host: Nobody.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Just because you had a bad habit or you picked up smoking, it does not mean you're condemned for any reason. And so, the research in lung cancer kind of lagged behind, and so it's been harder also to move the needle with lung cancer. It's a deadly cancer, and it acts not so nice. So, we're a little behind. We're behind breast cancer, you know, a good 10 years or more. They figured this out in breast cancer before us. But now, we know if we treat up front and then go back and resect, we get better cure rates for even stage II. So, for stage II, you get both.

For stage III, it depends. Sometimes we treat up front and come back and take it out. Sometimes, because of a variety of reasons, the size of the tumor, the location of the tumor, it may have spread to lymph nodes or just not be able to be taken out because your lungs aren't healthy enough, those patients may not be eligible for surgery. Some are, some are not, but they all are mostly eligible for some sort of systemic treatment.

And then, back to stage IV, like we talked about. And it gets to be a little tricky pickle. There are certain instances in stage IV where if there's only one spot it's spread to that we might treat that and then come back and do local. That's a different story, another conversation. We can go really in the weeds there if you want.

Host: Yeah. I'm sure there's a ton of different scenarios.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: A million.

Host: Yeah.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: But for the most part, treatment is going to look mostly systemic, and the reason being is surgery is not going to benefit that patient, and that's what we have to figure out. That's why I talk about risk versus benefit. Whenever we take somebody to the operating room to do surgery, we want to make sure that the end result is going to be disease-free survival and benefit. If we don't think we can get it all, they're not going to benefit from going to an operation, then we're going to stick into the treatment categories of systemic treatment and maybe radiation.

Host: Yeah.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Sorry. I got really all over the place there, but...

Host: No, I feel like it helped round out the conversation of the treatments and to really underscore that early detection is, the earlier it is, the more options you have, which you, you know, very wonderfully laid out for us.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah. The world's your oyster when you come up early. You really may not need everything, but it's all still available to you.

Host: And that puts your medical team, your care team in the best position to treat you when they have all their tools at the disposal to help provide the best outcome for the patient.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Exactly. Can't argue with that.

Host: Now, you've explained some of the advances in research and diagnosis, and obviously the low-dose CT scan was a massive step forward in the diagnosis of lung cancer. What's on the horizon? We like to have an optimist outlook. You know, what's on the horizon as far as technology advancements, either in diagnosis or treatment that you're seeing right now?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. So, things are moving really fast right now in lung cancer. Really fast.

Host: Fast in a good way?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Fast in a good way. Okay. So, you know, iwhen I finished my training roughly 2015, 2016, you know, robotics was just coming on board for surgical options. Now, that's basically standard of care.

Host: Yes.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: The next thing that was kind of coming down the pike or was happening back there, was using the bronchoscopy more for diagnosis.

Host: And what's a bronchoscopy?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: A bronchoscopy is where we go down, we put a breathing tube or an endotracheal tube down a patient's throat, and we go down that way to try to get a biopsy or make a diagnosis, whether it be a lymph nodes or the tumor.

Host: So, that's part of the diagnosis process. That's not treatment.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Part of the diagnosis process. Not treatment. And that was just coming on board. We were starting to do more minimally invasive ways to make diagnosis. And now, we have a robotic bronchoscopy platform that is available to patients that are allowing us to actually biopsy some of the very, very tiny early nodules and making diagnoses that we were not previously able to make because the tumors were too little for us to actually know what to do with. And now, we can actually diagnose these things with the technology that we have, and then you're really open to a lot of different treatment options. If you're diagnosing something that's six to eight millimeters in size, and that's tiny. That's really tiny.

Host: Right. For the people who are watching, how big is—

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: We're talking a pea

Host: or smaller.

Okay. So, like the size of like a fingernail.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: A fingernail. Yeah, we're able to actually biopsy something that little now out in the lung periphery with the technology we have today.

Host: Through robotics.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Through robotic bronchoscopy. And then, sometimes we're able to mark those, and then they can go for surgery, sometimes on the same anesthetic even. And that single anesthetics are coming. The next thing is going to be treatment through that same platform using a bronchoscope or a robotic bronchoscopy to navigate all the way out to the tumor and treat it in some way, burn it, freeze it, inject some chemo into it. I see that coming down the pike in the next few years.

Host: And I'm curious, a little peek behind the curtain as far as like the physician side. So when this technology comes out, what's the training look like for you and your colleagues who would be using this?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. So, you know, there are different types of platforms that we can use. But roughly, what it looks like is you either get trained during your residency if that technology is available. For me, it wasn't. And so, what I did was I went and did additional training on how to do robotics, and then you go to one of the facilities that actually house robots, and you do simulations and practice operating and you train on the robot, and then you come back to your home hospital and usually have proctored cases with a master surgeon until you get so many cases under your belt.

Host: That's got to be exciting as, you know, somebody who's made this their life's work to, like, keep learning and keep being a part of the progress that's going on.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: I think the exciting thing is now is we're finally, as, you know, oncology providers, starting to move the needle. Like, you know, lung cancer was so frustrating. We were doing our best work and just not making a—we were making an individual difference in each patient's life. But collectively, you just felt like, for the amount of patients you saw and you worked so hard for, we were losing so many. And, you know, you weren't ringing the bell as much as you wanted to. And I finally feel that with some of the newer technologies, some of the newer drugs, that we're finally actually making a big difference for the first time in a while.

Host: We love to hear that.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah.

Host: Part of these podcasts is we want to make sure that we're getting the correct information out there. And as our subject matter expert, I'm sure you hear a lot of misinformation. What's maybe one of the big pieces of misinformation that you hear often where you need to steer people away from and get them back to the truth?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah. So, the one I get over and over and over again is when the air hits it, the cancer cells spread. No one wants the surgery. They're afraid when we open them, it's just going to, like, take off like wildfire.

Host: Oh, okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: That ambient air hitting a tumor just, like, makes it go bananas. And this one I get, I don't care where I've practiced, where I've lived, where I've trained, it is across the board.

Host: Okay.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: And I spend a lot of time dispelling that myth. Ambient air has never been shown to spread lung cancer in any study ever done. For, for one, lung cancer spreads or metastasize through two main routes. Bloodstream, a tumor cell breaks off and get in your blood and takes off, or through your lymphatic system. Now, your lymph nodes, what are your lymph nodes? They're a special system that, like, help you with infections and so on. And in lung cancer, it's most often spread through the lymph nodes. There's never been shown that when you cut somebody and the air hits the tumor, it spreads. But usually, based in fact as always some old wives' tale.

So, it wasn't that long ago that the only way us as doctors and surgeons had to deal with lung cancer is someone would come to the clinic coughing blood, we could get a chest X-ray and see a mass and be very, "Okay, well, we can try to cut this out." And so, we'd take them to the operating room with symptoms and a chest X-ray, you know, and open them up and realize, "Oh my goodness, it's just too late," and then close them back up.

Host: Oh, wow.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: And that was happening, I mean, not recently of course, but that did happen. And so, from that grew legend and myth and old wives' tales or whatever you want to call it. And so, people in their minds and hearts felt like, "Well, I had a loved one. I know that my grandma, my great-grandma went to the operating room, and they opened her up, and it spread, and she passed away." And this became something that they would propagate.

Host: Interesting. So, that's the backstory of how that started.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: That's kind of what I believe it to be anyway. I don't know that this is fact, but his is what I believe, because, you know, we didn't have CT scanners always. We definitely didn't have PET scanners always. We didn't have robotics always. And so, people were getting cut wide open in an attempt to remove these cancers that either had already started to spread or were wildly spread when they got in there, or they'd removed it and, you know, metastasis process had already started, and they passed away. So, I believe that that's kind of where that may have came from, but that's just not true. But I get that often. Really often.

And if you want to just sit and think for a minute, if it's a lung cancer and air hitting it spreads it, every time you take a breath, it would just poof. And that's just not true.

Host: That's a good point. Right.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: That doesn't really happen, right?

Host: Right.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. So, you know, you really have to kind of calm everyone down and give them, "Okay, I've, heard this before. Here's the context that I believe this is coming from." There's a valid point there. They've had a life experience. Someone in their family members had a life experience. There's some reason behind this, and we offer reassurance that that's not how cancer spreads. And if I take you to the operating room to remove your early-stage lung cancer, I'm not going to, like, light a fuse. You know, we're going to try to cure you.

Host: You mentioned this part of reassurance. And obviously, you know, patients being scared. This is a really scary thing. This can be life and death.

For somebody who's listening who is thinking they might be checking those boxes to be high-risk to get screened, but there is that fear, what would you say to somebody to encourage them to go to their doctor, get the scan?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. I think a lot of basis in fear is just the not knowing and being afraid of an actual diagnosis. Just because you get screened for lung cancer doesn't mean you're going to have it. If you get something caught early, you know, it's totally treatable and curable. The ostrich approach, as I like to call it, like putting your head in the sand and hoping that nothing bad is going to happen or praying that the symptoms you're experiencing aren't really real, ultimately isn't going to stop the process from happening, right? And so, while it's scary to be vulnerable and to go to your doctor with your fears and say, "Hey, you know, finding out, it could be good news." First off, you could have nothing.

Host: That is a possibility.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: You could have absolutely nothing. And you're ultimately reassured, and then you can go and put your head on your pillow and be like, "Phew, dodged that one. I don't have lung cancer. Thank heavens." Or you catch it early, and then you're curable. First thing I always try to encourage my patients if they're smoking, "How can I help you quit? It's not a crime."

Host: Yeah.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: I'm not here to judge. We're here to help.

Host: Yes.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: And, you know, if you're eligible for screening, go and get screened because it could save your life, it could provide you with some reassurance that you're okay.

Host: Yeah. Thank you for those encouraging and empathetic words.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah.

Host: At TGH, we talk about healing, teaching, innovation as part of our shared purpose. Which of those resonates most with you right now, and why?

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: I'm in the innovation center, so I want to say innovation. I think I'm caught somewhere between the innovation and I don't know, I guess, the healing or the health part of it, because they kind of go hand-in-hand a little bit.

Host: We covered all of it in this discussion.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right, we did. We touched on all of those. So for lung cancer, things are so innovative right now. And so, that's really speaking to me, you know, because there's so much that's happened, so new in such a short period of time that it really is innovative. And I feel like we're right on the crux of something even bigger and better every minute we're doing something with lung cancer and saving another life.

But ultimately, all the innovation in the world still touches a person and a human life. And so, that healing portion is really, really—I don't know. It's hard for me to separate the two right now, to be honest with you.

Host: That's okay. We'll let you answer two.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Can I say two? Innovation and healing. I get two.

Host: Okay. Innovation to get to the healing.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Right. Innovation to get to the healing.

Host: Yeah.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Yeah.

Host: I like that. All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Vinson. Thank you ffor coming on the podcast and just sharing this wealth of information you have.

Mary Carolyn Clements Vinson, DO: Thanks so much for having me. I hope it helps somebody.

Host: That has been Dr. Mary Carolyn Vinson. For more information, visit tgh.org/cancer. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, subscribe, or follow Community Connect: presented by TGH on your favorite podcast platform. I'm Karen Loftus. Thanks for listening.

Disclaimer: The content and information provided in our podcasts is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical care. Consult a qualified medical professional for diagnosis and treatment of any medical condition.