Study: Simple CT Scan Could Prevent Thousands of Deaths

New research suggests the US is missing a huge opportunity to save lives when it comes to the deadliest cancer in the country, the New York Times reports. Nearly 125,000 people in the US die from lung cancer every year, yet only 18% of people eligible for a lung cancer screening—which is a simple CT scan—get one. If all who qualified did, another 62,000 lives could be saved over five years, a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests. That's four times as many lives as are currently being saved through early detection.

The high-risk group eligible for annual lung cancer screenings is defined by the US Preventive Services Task Force as adults ages 50 to 80 who have a significant smoking history (they must have smoked within the past 15 years and smoked an average of a pack a day for at least two decades or equivalent, such as two packs a day for one decade). Despite this, the majority of eligible Americans either aren't aware of the screening or face barriers such as complicated eligibility rules, stigma, or lack of access to care. The study found that reconstructing a patient's decades-long smoking history often makes determining eligibility difficult for both patients and doctors, and the study notes that just half of adults diagnosed with lung cancer would have met the screening qualifications, Mass General Brigham reports.

Primary care physician Dr. Mara Schonberg called the current 18% screening rate "abysmal," especially compared to the 70% to 80% rate for other cancer screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies. The study found that another 30,000 lives could be saved if screening guidelines were loosened to include people who quit more than 15 years ago or smoked less than a pack a day for 20 years. However, experts emphasize that more research is needed, since the study didn't account for any risks related to lung cancer screening (including false positives and unnecessary tests), and it also depended on assumptions rather than real-world data to come up with its estimate of lives that could be saved. One 69-year-old who was screened recently talked to McLaren about the experience, which did reveal a cancerous nodule on his lung.