UF Health Lung Cancer Program: Overview
UF Health Shands Hospital is ranked as one of the nation's top hospitals for cancer and pulmonology & lung surgery by U.S. News & World Report.
Lung cancer requires expert care. Our multidisciplinary team is here to help.
The UF Health Cancer Center’s Lung Cancer Program has expert medical professionals that offer evaluation and personalized management of patients with thoracic malignancies. Their range of expertise includes management of small cell and non-small cell lung cancer, as well as chest wall tumors, mesothelioma, thymic tumors, and other less common malignancies of the lung.
The program is deeply committed to treating patients with exceptional skill, expertise, and compassion. These values assure that patients are treated with leading-edge therapies, including clinical trials, in a patient-centered setting.
To ensure that care is streamlined, individualized, and focused on the patient’s needs, the lung cancer program incorporates a multidisciplinary approach to cancer management. Specialists from pulmonary medicine, thoracic surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, and nursing work as a team to care for each patient.
Our lung cancer nurse navigator, Stacey Reeves, RN, provides a direct link between our patients and the multidisciplinary care team by acting as a patient advocate, communicating patient and family concerns, coordinating clinic visits and setting up appointments within the UF Health system.
Our expertise
Our team has at their fingertips the latest cutting-edge technology and techniques to treat lung cancer. We offer:
- Minimally invasive surgery including video assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) and robotic surgery
- Interventional pulmonology with advanced diagnostic and therapeutic modalities like EBUS (endobrochial ultrasonography), laser, and airway stenting
- Innovative radiotherapy planning and delivery techniques including stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT)
- One of the few proton therapy centers in the country with experience treating lung cancer
- A wide range of clinical trials for all stages and types of lung cancer
- Comprehensive molecular and genetic profiling of cancer tissue with individualized targeted therapy and immunotherapy
- Lung cancer screening
Our commitment to care is apparent from following:
- Minimally invasive lung cancer staging with EBUS in 100% of cases
- 90% of new lung cancer referrals seen within 7 days
- Majority of lung cancer surgeries are done with minimally invasive approach (VATS and Robotics) with significant decrease in length of hospital stay.
- More than 10 clinical trials open for enrollment in lung cancer
- 100% non-squamous lung cancers gets their tumor samples analyzed for molecular markers to identify patients who will qualify for personalized therapy. In addition to testing for PD-L1, ALK, and ROS1 status, we test for mutations in 115 cancer genes in our in-house molecular pipeline.
Multidisciplinary care model
We know that cancer patients often need a combination of therapies to manage their disease. UF Health has a highly-regarded network of leading-edge cancer treatment resources.
To ensure streamlined, individualized care that is focused on the patient’s needs, the UF Health Lung Cancer Center incorporates a multidisciplinary approach to cancer management. This means that specialists from pulmonary medicine, thoracic (chest) surgery, medical oncology, radiation oncology, radiology, pathology, and oncology nursing work as a team to care for each patient.
Patients meet with a number of practitioners at their first visit to our multidisciplinary clinic. Those practitioners then meet as a team to discuss and coordinate each patient’s treatment plan. We may also determine at this time if a patient is a suitable candidate for one of our clinical trials.