TV icon Larry King revealed that he has been dealing with lung cancer, talking about the diagnosis during an interview with “Extra’s” Mario Lopez.

“Extra” reports that King, 83, told Lopez: “I have a checkup every year. I’ve gone through a lot in my life — I’ve had a heart attack and heart surgery. Part of my checkup is the chest X-ray, and that is the protocol. I do it every year … it was always normal. Then the doctor says, ‘I see a little spot here. Let’s do a CAT scan,’ so they do a CAT scan, and they say, ‘Let’s do a PET scan’ … I don’t think there are any other scans.”

King said the doctor told him: “You have a small [spot]. It could be malignant, it could be benign — we ought to take it out.”

King said he had surgery on July 17 at Cedars in Los Angeles. “They took it out,” he said. “It was malignant. They were going to take it out if it was malignant or benign. They tested it. They said, ‘You are fine.’ It was stage 1.”

King also noted: “I had no clue at all. If I had not had the chest X-ray, it would have progressed.”

King was reportedly back home a week after the surgery, and after another week he returned to work. The longtime smoker said he now plans to have a chest X-ray taken every six months.