FOREWORD

It was the destiny’s decision to treat two diseases in my capacity of doctor, without my particular willingness - tuberculosis and cancer. Tuberculosis, due to the fact that I got sick of pulmonary tuberculosis in the fourth year of faculty, and cancer due to social reasons completely beyond my control. People are mastered by time (!!!)

I have worked for 20 years as phthisiologist and the following 21 years as oncologist. Oncology is a wide scope specialty, but whithin which - until now, due to the disease severity - the doctor’s excellence is still not rewarded. Nevertheless I accustomed quickly and well, probably because I was already accustomed to polychemotherapy treatment of the pulmonary tuberculosis, which over time preceded the polychemotherapy treatment of the cancer. I have gradually began to love working as oncologist. I acquired a rational and weighted optimism and noticed that under certain circumstances of diagnosis on time, depending on the oncologist’s competence and material capability of the hospital, nice successes may be achieved.

In 1988 I happenned to read an extremely brief article in a German medical review on genetic matters in Small Cell Lung Cancer, an essay that conquered me. Since that moment it has become my major concern, but which became possible thanks to the computer actuality. Too bad that my wish of having available specialty reviews on time and without problems has been fulfilled too late. I cannot forget that working as doctor during the communist period I had to strive hardly for being able to read specialty literature, particularly at the time when I was drawing up my PhD thesis. However I can do this now when I am retired! Each person in his/her life has some satisfactions that come too late.

This paper is the crowning of my efforts of synthesizing the molecular pathology data of Lung Cancer, firstly for me to understand them better and secondly to persuade my pneumology specialty colleagues that understanding the molecular pathology constitutes and will become the foundation on which will be developed another form of treatment in the near future. This new form of treatment will have the great advantage to be a more precise, targeted treatment, exceeding the current treatment which is homogenous, non-targeted to a heterogenous disease in terms of genetics. The genetic aspects represent the physio-pathology of the neoplastic lesion.

This work is a personal attempt to summarise data from the specialty literature. It does not include a personal participation, only the endeavour to gather data, set them in order for becoming comprehensible. Neither I nor you have got to study the genetics data, but with tenacity, through study and with the help of Wikipedia, in the tranquility of our homes, will better understand these new data.

It will be my greatest contentment when pneumologists, especially the younger ones will have assimilated the concepts of molecular pathology. The knowledge of molecular pathology will give objective, rational hope of having a more effective treatment of this serious disease, which has not yet exceeded the 15% survival percentage to 5 years compared with the prostate cancer that has reached 99%, breast cancer 86%, colon cancer 66% and ENT cancer 30%.

With all my love, for the doctors who will study these data from medical literature for their medical enlightenment and particularly to deal more thoroughly, more accurate with this disease still incurable,

POPESCU IULIAN, graduate of the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, class from 1951 Pneumology primary doctor. Doctor of Medical Sciences since 1966

Competence in oncological chemotherapy

Competence in oncological and military medical radiobiology

Radio-Isotopes competence

The last institution where I worked before retirement: the Clinical Department of Radiobiology from the FUNDENI Clinical Institute