When to start lung cancer screening
Lung Cancer Screening
the National lung screening trial
enrolled over 53,000 subjects looking
for a way to reduce lung cancer
mortality and the patients who underwent
screening CT scans we were able to
reduce the lung cancer death rate by 20%
this means that for every 300 patients
screen we were able to save one life
lung cancer is the leading cause of
cancer death in the United States and
worldwide today for other cancers such
as the breast prostate gland cervix and
colon
we have screening tests that have been
shown to reduce cancer mortality the
results of this trial are particularly
important because for the first time we
are now able to show we can reduce lung
cancer death rates for the screening
test the only people who benefit from
this type of screening at people between
the ages of 55 and 74 years who've
smoked a certain amount and we currently
measure cigarettes exposure by term
called pack-years so one pack per day
for 30 years would be 30 packers only
people who smoke 30 or more pack years
were eligible to be enrolled in the
study and we know then that only those
people would benefit from this form
screening
well the results of this study are going
to prompt a lot of people to ask the
question why don't we screen everybody
and the simple answer is that this study
didn't enroll everybody enrolled a very
narrow segment of the population and
it's only that segment that we know can
benefit from through this form of
screening with CT scans done annually in
fact we know that we could probably do
more harm than good if we start
screening people who aren't at high risk
for lung cancer because of the fact that
we'll find many things that aren't
cancer it'll expose these people to
other tests some of which have risk one
of the drawbacks of screening for lung
cancer with CT is that many if not most
people undergoing the test will have
abnormalities that are not lung cancer
some of these are things like aneurysms
which are good to know about to prevent
mortality from that disease process but
other abnormalities are not very
specific and we don't know what they
mean for the patient they would have to
undergo additional diagnostic testing
some of which is quite invasive to
figure out the significance of these
findings this adds both cost as well as
potential
complications to their ongoing medical
care delivery this is an extremely
important finding
we've been waiting 40 years for the
results of screening studies to show
that we have a test that can truly
reduce one's chance of dying from lung
cancer so now to have a tool that we
know reduces one's chance of dying from
lung cancer is an extremely exciting
thing for those of us who deal with lung
cancer patients on a regular basis
