Proposed guidelines likely to identify more early lung cancers

Lung cancer is the second most prevalent cancer in the US, and the deadliest cancer killer. In 2020, an estimated 135,720 people will die from the disease — more than breast, colon, and prostate cancers combined. I’ll never forget meeting new, advanced-stage lung cancer patients who ask if their diagnosis could have somehow been made earlier, when treatment would have been more likely to succeed. In 2009, when I began practicing thoracic oncology, there were no approved screening tests for lung cancer. A brief history of lung cancer screening Hope for early detection and death prevention came in 2011 with the publication of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST). This was the first randomized clinical trial to show a lung cancer mortality benefit for lung screening, using annual low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans for older patients with a significant smoking history. This led to the 2014 US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation for lung cancer screening. The USPSTF recommended a yearly LDCT scan to screen people who met certain criteria: a 30-pack-year smoking history (smoking one pack of cigarettes per day for 30 years or the equivalent amount); being a current smoker or former smoker who quit within the past 15 years; and age from 55 to 80 years. Since the NLST publication, an additional randomized clinical trial done in Europe (the NELSON trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2020) also showed a reduction in lung ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cancer Lung disease Screening Source Type: blogs