By just about any measure, 2017 has been a banner year in lung cancer management for the lung cancer community.  Here is just a partial list of some of the key highlights:

• Growing use of stereotactic ablative body radiation (SABR) for patients with unresectable early stage disease
• Increasing momentum for local therapies, including surgery and/or radiation, for isolated residual disease after systemic therapy even for more advanced NSCLC
• A likely new standard of care for unresectable stage III NSCLC, with addition of immunotherapy, after more than a decade without any treatments proven to improve clinical outcomes
• Evolving standards for how to best integrate immunotherapy for stage IV NSCLC, with ever-improving survival numbers
• Significant benefits from shifting later generation EGFR and ALK inhibitor therapies into first line treatment.
• Mounting evidence to support a role for immunotherapy in treatment of small cell lung cancer and malignant pleural mesothelioma.
• Hints to help us better define which patients are more or less likely to benefit from immunotherapy.

Still, anybody working in lung cancer remains humbled by our ongoing challenges.  Not only should we remind ourselves and the rest of the world that #433aday in the US alone die of lung cancer, but lung cancer is still terribly under-recognized as the leading cause of cancer death for both women and men in the US and among the leading causes around the world.  This, along with the ever-present stigma throughout the general public that victims of lung cancer are less deserving of support and empathy because of the ties of the disease to tobacco, continues to leave lung cancer woefully underfunded in clinical research.

As we approach the end of 2017, please join #LCSM Community on 12/14 at 8 PM Eastern (5 PM Pacific) to review our 2017 highlights and discuss what we envision for 2018.  Moderator Dr. Jack West (@JackWestMD) will help us cover the following questions:

• From your personal perspective (doc, pt, caregiver), what were biggest developments in lung cancer in 2017?
• Has the #LCSM community made meaningful strides in 2017 in overcoming long-standing challenges in how LC is perceived by others?
• What are most likely big advances in lung cancer mgmt you anticipate or (realistically) hope to see as changes in 2018?
• As an #LCSM community, what are key shortcomings WE need to address to advance developments in LC? How can we help ourselves?

Please remember to include #LCSM in ALL your tweets so the other chat participants can see them. You can read a primer on participating in the chat here.  Hope you’ll join us!