Jeffrey Crawford, MD

When someone is faced with a diagnosis of lung cancer, they may be going through surgery, radiation treatment, chemotherapy or enrolling in a clinical trial. It’s a very complicated process to understand what’s involved and what may happen next. It’s also hard to hear all the answers if you’re by yourself. We encourage our patients to come with family members and friends and loved ones and particularly to identify one or two main go-to people in terms of care-giving and support. That way we can engage them in the whole process. Just as we have a team taking care of the patient, the patient has a team, too. At Duke, we have the opportunity to engage patients in the very latest treatment approaches, whether it’s a new surgical technique, the latest radiation approach, or some novel chemotherapy, immunology, or targeted therapy, several of which we’ve been developing. Duke provides patients with a real opportunity that they may not have elsewhere.