If You Smoke You Need To Listen To This Rockford Doctor

What's Up, Doc? is a weekly health segment on WROK sponsored by MercyHealth. Each week they highlight a different doctor/healthcare professional to come on our show and talk to us about their specialty. It has turned into one of our favorite segments. All of our doctors have exhibited a "human" side that people don't always get to see with their physicians. We encourage you to check out some of our past episodes here. We've done about 30 of these segments highlighting everything from Lyme disease to hernia repair to finding a health care plan and everything else in between. We've learned a lot and hope you can too.

This was the second appearance on the show for Dr. Gregory Richards and we can't wait to have him on for a third.

Dr. Richards is an oncologist for Mercyhealth in Rockford and specializes in radiation therapy. We often marvel at how well our doctors communicate during our What's Up, Doc? segment and Dr. Richards is definitely not an exception. He obviously knows what he's talking about but is able to explain it plainly and in a way that invites curiosity and follow up questions which he also handles quite well.

Some of the topics covered in this week's episode are:

What is radiation therapy?
How do we decide what types of treatments to use in lung cancer?
How is radiation therapy used in lung cancer?
What are the new developments in radiation therapy for lung cancer?

In addition to those, Dr. Richards talked to us about a brand new procedure Mercyhealth is using to detect lung cancer earlier, to give those diagnosed a much better chance at living.

If you're a smoker or know one, making an appointment for this brand new screening could mean the difference between life and death.

We thank Dr. Richards for his time and look forward to next week's guest on What's Up, Doc?

A new What's Up, Doc? airs every Thursday morning at 8:35 on 1440 WROK.