“I'm not aware of data to show that more young people are being diagnosed with lung cancer,”  says Russell K. Hales, M.D., a radiation oncologist, at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center on the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus. “But anecdotally, it is what I seem to be seeing as well.  What we tend to see in these younger patients with lung cancer, is specific changes like mutations or translocations with a much higher likelihood of responding to one of the targeted therapies.  That means they have a better outlook, because these targeted therapies tend to work, and tend to work well.”