Patient Success Stories

Silver Spring Man’s Lung Cancer Treated as Part of Clinical Trial on Combination Therapies

Fifty-three-year-old Leon Burns was diagnosed with pneumonia in November 2005. He began to question his diagnosis when he didn’t get better, and follow-up X-rays of his lungs showed no improvement.

Adding to his unease was the fact that a good friend had recently died of lung cancer -- after being misdiagnosed with pneumonia. Despite the fact that he had never smoked cigarettes and had no family history of cancer, he decided to take an aggressive approach and find out once and for all what he was dealing with.

He consulted with several doctors and underwent a number of inconclusive diagnostic tests before a CT scan indicated that he did in fact have lung cancer. An oncologist neighbor read his films and advised him of the seriousness of his condition. He recommended that Burns come to the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center (UMGCC) in Baltimore to see Mark Krasna, M.D., professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and head of thoracic oncology at UMGCC.

Dr. Krasna performed a biopsy of Burns’ lung and lymph nodes, and results showed stage IIIA locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. This meant that his cancer was limited to the chest and had not spread to other parts of the body.

Burns and his wife then met for over three hours in a single visit with the thoracic oncology multidisciplinary team of Martin Edelman, M.D., professor of medicine and a specialist in medical oncology for lung cancer, and Mohan Suntha, M.D., associate professor of radiation oncology and a specialist in radiation therapies for lung cancer.

“I had been carrying around all of my reports and films in the trunk of my car, as I went from one specialist to another, trying to decide where to seek my treatment. One of the reasons that I chose UMGCC is that it appeared to me right away this team had a plan. None of the others I consulted seemed to have a systematic plan to attack the problem. The team here inspired our confidence because they combined knowledge of all the specialties that would be involved in my care,” he said.

The team told Burns about all the treatment options available for his condition. They explained that UMGCC was participating in a national research study, led by Drs. Suntha, Edelman and Krasna, testing the benefit of combining three types of treatment – chemotherapy, high-dose radiation and surgery – to treat locally-advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

Earlier work done at UMGCC had shown promising results in treating patients with combination therapy before surgery for lung cancer. The national study is designed to build on this earlier research in order to find out what effects a combination of chemotherapy and high-dose radiation therapy followed by surgery and chemotherapy have on patients and their cancer.

As part of the study, Burns’ treatment plan would consist of seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiation, followed by surgery to remove part of his lung. Surgery after the chemotherapy and radiation is done to remove any remaining cancer, and to decrease the risk of the cancer returning in the lung.

He would then have a recovery period from the lung surgery before beginning another course of chemotherapy. This would be followed by preventive radiation treatment for the brain. Burns agreed to take part in the study, feeling it would give him his best chance of survival.

Now about 95 percent recovered from his cancer treatment, he returns to the cancer center for follow-up CT scans every few months. On a recent morning, the Silver Spring, Md., businessman visited the cancer center for a different reason: to meet with development staff to discuss ways that he can contribute to the work being done at UMGCC, both with his time and with financial support.

“I was so impressed with the care and the level of expertise of the doctors here. I want to give something back in appreciation for what’s been done for me,” he said. Burns was featured in a television news story about the research study. He also met personally with the Governor to help encourage him to support state funding for cancer research at UMGCC through the Maryland Cigarette Restitution Fund.

For more information about treatments for lung cancer, the trimodality lung cancer clinical trial, or other programs of the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center, please call 1-800-888-8823.

If you would like to share your story about treatment for cancer at UMGCC, please e-mail us or call 410-328-8289.


This page was last updated on: January 24, 2007.