Early Detection May Help Kentucky Tamp Down Its Lung Cancer Crisis
Anthony Stumbo’s heart sank after the doctor shared his mother’s chest X-ray. “I remember that drive home, bringing her back home, and we basically cried,” said the internal medicine physician, who had started practicing in eastern Kentucky near his childhood home shortly before his mother began feeling ill. “Nobody wants to get told they’ve got inoperable lung cancer. I cried because I knew what this meant for her.” Now Stumbo, whose mother died the following year, in 1997, is among a group of Kentucky clinicians and researchers determined to rewrite the script for other families by promoting...