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Meet Dr. Lynn Tanoue

July 15, 2021

Meet Dr. Lynn Tanoue

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  • 00:00My name is Linda.
  • 00:01No EI am a professor of medicine in the
  • 00:04section of pulmonary and critical care
  • 00:07medicine at Yale School of Medicine.
  • 00:09I come. Treat patients who have all
  • 00:12sorts of pulmonary diseases because I
  • 00:15am a pulmonary critical care physician,
  • 00:18I became a pulmonologist because it's
  • 00:20kind of like super internal medicine.
  • 00:23You maintain the breadth of disease,
  • 00:25but but the ability then to focus
  • 00:28on a specific area of medicine,
  • 00:31in this case, pulmonary medicine
  • 00:33and intensive care unit medicine.
  • 00:35And I got interested in the
  • 00:38rasic oncology and lung cancer.
  • 00:40Maybe 20 years ago?
  • 00:43Pulmonologists participate in the
  • 00:45diagnostic part of that evaluation
  • 00:47because many patients are thought
  • 00:49to have lung cancer,
  • 00:50but end up having some other
  • 00:53pulmonary problem, and I find that.
  • 00:57Puzzle piece of it really interesting.
  • 01:00And I realized that's a very challenging
  • 01:03time for patients because of the
  • 01:05concern of something bad like cancer
  • 01:07or some other problem that really
  • 01:10could affect their life and longevity.
  • 01:12I'm the principal investigator on
  • 01:14the Yale Lung Cancer Biorepository,
  • 01:17which right now has over 1000 cases
  • 01:19of patients who have had lung cancer.
  • 01:22Predominantly early stage lung cancer,
  • 01:24and that is my interest.
  • 01:26The patients who are early stage
  • 01:29I direct the.
  • 01:30Lung cancer screening and nodule
  • 01:32program and the intent of that really
  • 01:34is to do early detection so that we
  • 01:37will screen for patients who have lung
  • 01:39cancer before they ever might suspect
  • 01:41they do before they have symptoms.
  • 01:43In a similar way too that women get
  • 01:46mammography to screen for breast cancer.
  • 01:4820 years ago people really
  • 01:50felt if they had lung cancer,
  • 01:52they were just going to die and in many
  • 01:55cases that unfortunately it was true that
  • 01:57the one year survival even was quite low.
  • 02:00And that has really changed,
  • 02:02and so in a similar way that
  • 02:05breast cancer now has many,
  • 02:07many,
  • 02:07many long term survivors who may
  • 02:09live with the disease very well,
  • 02:12even if it can't be cured those
  • 02:14days for lung cancer are here,
  • 02:17and we are really moving towards
  • 02:19that future where we can help
  • 02:21people live long and healthy lives,
  • 02:23even if they've had or have
  • 02:26a diagnosis of lung cancer.