Dr. Bryant Lin, a primary care physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer earlier this year.
In recent years, Dr. Bryant Lin has noticed a shocking new trend among his demographic.
Young Americans, particularly those of Asian descent, were developing deadly lung cancer, even though they had never smoked a cigarette.
As a primary care doctor for many Asian patients, and as an Asian man, duty demanded it.
In 2018, he founded Stanford University’s Asian Health Research and Education Center to investigate why this group was prone to cancer and other long-term diseases.
But earlier this spring, he developed a persistent cough that lasted six weeks.
At first, he assumed it was simply allergies and tried a series of inhalers. But when the cough persisted, Dr. Lin texted a colleague, who ordered scans and a biopsy of his lung tissue.
Less than two weeks later, in May 2024, Dr. Lin was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, despite never having smoked a cigarette.
Dr. Lin is one of thousands of young people diagnosed with America’s deadliest cancer.
Lung cancer, which affects more than 230,000 Americans each year and accounts for one in five cancer deaths, is primarily caused by smoking.
But as smoking declines in the United States, lung cancer rates are increasing in people under age 50 with no history of smoking.
This has been especially true for Asian American women, among whom rates have increased two percent per year since 2006.
Dr. Lin said yahoo life: “But I would never have thought that I would have this cancer or that I would become the model for my center that works on this cancer.”
Dr. Lin’s diagnosis inspired him to teach a new class at Stanford, which aims to teach students about cancer treatment and empathy through the lens of a patient.
The above shows lung cancer cases among men and women divided by age groups. It reveals that the disease is now more common in younger women, compared to other groups.
His diagnosis inspired him to start teaching a new class at Stanford, where he himself was a case study. The course is intended to teach students about cancer treatment and empathy through the lens of a patient.
He said: ‘As a doctor, you have an awareness, but not necessarily a visceral understanding, of what a patient goes through. The data, the science: As a patient, that’s about two percent of your day. The rest of the day you go about your life, so we structure the class around that.’
She hopes it will teach students that “it’s very important to have empathy and understand what (a patient’s) journey is like.”
While Dr. Lin was able to start chemotherapy just eight weeks after the cough began, many young lung cancer patients have a delayed diagnosis because doctors attribute their symptoms to more common conditions such as asthma or bronchitis.
One small studioFor example, it found that lung cancer patients, on average, go untreated for an average of 138 days after symptoms such as cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath begin.
While smokers make up up to 90 percent of older lung cancer patients, this number drops to 71 percent among younger patients.
Young patients also have significantly shorter exposures, averaging 11.5 years compared to 49 years for older patients.
According to recent data from Pew Research, only 10 percent of young adults said they smoked between 2019 and 2023, compared to 35 percent between 2001 and 2003.
While Dr. Lin’s EGFR mutation makes him a candidate for targeted therapies, the cancer can become resistant to treatment within a year or two.
In Dr. Lin’s case, genetic testing revealed that his cancer was likely caused by a mutation of his EGFR gene.
This means that cancer causes excess EGFR protein, which can speed up the growth of lung cancer cells.
He said: ‘About 50 percent of non-smoking Asians (with lung cancer) have this mutation, and less than 20 percent of non-Hispanic whites have it. “We really don’t know why Asians suffer from this mutation more than other groups.”
This mutation can also make the cancer more aggressive and diagnosed at later stages.
Dr. Lin said, “Fortunately, this makes me a candidate for targeted therapy.”
He now takes the chemotherapy pill Osimertinib, sold under the brand name Tagrisso, daily, which attacks mutated cancer cells. He also undergoes additional chemotherapy treatments every three weeks.
However, he noted that cancer can become resistant to these targeted therapies within a year or two, which could leave you with few options.
Although the possibility seems bleak, it remains optimistic. He said a colleague told him: “You just have to live long enough for the next treatment to work.”