Lung cancer: Florent Pagny gives news and wants to be reassuring

Invited to the TF1 news this Thursday, February 10, Florent Pagny returned to the lung cancer that affects him. The opportunity to reassure his fans about his state of health, after announcing that he had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer on January 25 via a video posted on his Instagram account.

Stage 1 cancer

The coach of The Voice thus explained that he discovered his illness quite early. “I’m doing very well, I find out very early, I’m in degree 1. I only have one tumor, I have no metastases. I have nothing in other organs”, he detailed. He had previously explained that his tumor could not be operated on, however, “because it is dividing very, very quickly. There is a high risk of it spreading to other organs. So we don’t operate” explained Florent Pagny”.

“That doesn’t mean his cancer is more serious” explains Dr. Liath Guetta, pulmonologist and member of the Doctissimo expert committee. “Every cancer is different” she believes.

First-line chemotherapy

However, the artist wants to remain optimistic. “Today, there are real good treatments. There is chemo, increasingly effective immunotherapy, radiation”. He has already started his first cycle of chemotherapy and “it’s going pretty well” according to his words. The singer tries not to see “only the good side of things. We will face the situation. I take it pretty well”he added.

Chemotherapy is based on the administration of one or more drugs that are toxic to cancer cells. Unlike surgery and radiotherapy, which have a localized action at the level of the tumour, chemotherapy is diffused throughout the body: which leads to more side effects but which also makes it possible to treat tumoral lesions, whether they may or may not be visible on medical imaging examinations. According to Dr. Guetta, “this is the strategy followed by his doctors, who begin with six courses of chemotherapy before continuing to treat him, thereafter, if necessary”.

Towards an immunotherapy treatment?

Florent Pagny talks about immunotherapy, which he may benefit from in his treatment. According to Dr. Liath Guetta, pulmonologist and member of the expert committee of Doctissimo, explained in the article “Florent Pagny suffering from lung cancer: the point on these tumors”: “Immunotherapy is a targeted therapy but you have to have the “right cancer” and the “right receptors” to consider it. If this is not the case, immunotherapy cannot work, and doctors go on a protocol that combines chemotherapy and radiotherapy”.

As the National Cancer Institute points out, the immunotherapies used in lung cancer have “aims to restore an effective immune response that allows the immune system to attack abnormal or foreign elements in the body. For this, it will act on disturbances that occur in tumor cells or their environment. The tumor has the ability to “slow down” the immune system. Specific immunotherapy drugs lift these brakes. In other words, they unlock the immune system“. In lung cancer, pembrolizumab and nivolumab are the two drugs that increase the activity of lymphocytes directed against tumor cells.

Dr. Guetta reminds that each patient is unique and will be treated in a specific way. “There is no pre-established protocol, you have to judge on a case-by-case basis. Oncologists meet with other colleagues in a multidisciplinary consultation meeting, to judge the merits of a treatment and its response, depending on the type of cancer and the previous treatments already tried..

Anyway, the singer will continue his treatments which will last six months and thanks his fans for the messages of support.