Hope With Answers: Living With Lung Cancer
Oct 1, 2026 · 23 min · 10 segments
Your oncologist says your IV treatment now comes as a SubQ injection. Is it really the same medicine? Will it hurt? Can you switch mid-treatment, and what if you want to switch back? Patient host…
Jeanne SzurekHostI'm originally from Puerto Rico, and I am an assistant professor of thoracic oncology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami.
And so basically, I specialize in caring for patients with lung cancer, and I do also a little bit of head and neck.
So a big part of my day, it's not only about thinking what treatments to give our patients, but also how we deliver these treatments.
So when I'm invited to talk about sub-Q, um, I think it's a, it's a very important conversation to have.
And so again, I, I'm very excited to be here today with you, that you've lived through it, um, just to have this, this discussion.
If I'm told that a medication I've been receiving through an IV can now be given as a sub-Q injection, I might wonder, am I really getting the same treatment? What would you tell the patient?
Yeah, no, that's a very good question, and that's actually a question that I get in the clinic, uh, pretty frequently.
It's like, "Doctor, is it too good to be true," right? Like, if you're telling me that, that we're going from an IV medication that used to take hours to a subcutaneous injection that's only a few minutes, are we compromising efficacy? And I think the important thing to explain to patients, right, is that the amount of time that it takes to give the drug or the medication doesn't tell us how effective that medication is.
And so it's important to really explain that before a subcutaneous medication and formulation is approved, there's ongoing research, very long-term research and studying how the medications behaves in the bodies, how the body absorbs it, how, what the drug levels are that patients are exposed to, and also whether it reaches that therapeutic effect that we intend to do.
And so I try to reassure my patients that we're not simply saying, "This is quicker, so we're just assuming that it works." No, this is ongoing, very long process that shows that it's works, and it's equivalent.
And so it's just an alternative to, to a, a formulation and a way of giving a medication.
I'm originally from Puerto Rico, and I am an assistant professor of thoracic oncology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami.
And so basically, I specialize in caring for patients with lung cancer, and I do also a little bit of head and neck.
So a big part of my day, it's not only about thinking what treatments to give our patients, but also how we deliver these treatments.
So when I'm invited to talk about sub-Q, um, I think it's a, it's a very important conversation to have.
And so again, I, I'm very excited to be here today with you, that you've lived through it, um, just to have this, this discussion.
If I'm told that a medication I've been receiving through an IV can now be given as a sub-Q injection, I might wonder, am I really getting the same treatment? What would you tell the patient?
Yeah, no, that's a very good question, and that's actually a question that I get in the clinic, uh, pretty frequently.
It's like, "Doctor, is it too good to be true," right? Like, if you're telling me that, that we're going from an IV medication that used to take hours to a subcutaneous injection that's only a few minutes, are we compromising efficacy? And I think the important thing to explain to patients, right, is that the amount of time that it takes to give the drug or the medication doesn't tell us how effective that medication is.
And so it's important to really explain that before a subcutaneous medication and formulation is approved, there's ongoing research, very long-term research and studying how the medications behaves in the bodies, how the body absorbs it, how, what the drug levels are that patients are exposed to, and also whether it reaches that therapeutic effect that we intend to do.
And so I try to reassure my patients that we're not simply saying, "This is quicker, so we're just assuming that it works." No, this is ongoing, very long process that shows that it's works, and it's equivalent.
And so it's just an alternative to, to a, a formulation and a way of giving a medication.
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