New Lung Cancer Screening Guidelines From The American Cancer Society: What You Should Know

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in this country. In 2012, the American Cancer Society estimates that there were about 226,000 people newly diganosed with lung cancer, and 160,000 deaths. If there is good news here-and unfortunately there isn't much good news when it comes to lung cancer-it is that deaths from this dreaded disease have been declining in men and women, since fewer people are smoking. But there is much we have to do to improve this picture. That's one of the reasons the American Cancer Society is releasing new guidelines on screening for lung cancer. After carefully reviewing the available research, the Society has concluded that there is good evidence that lung cancer screening saves lives by reducing deaths from lung cancer (20% in largest carefully controlled study) in people at high risk when the screening is done by experienced, high-volume lung cancer screening programs. So who should be screened? Who is at high risk? According to the guidelines, those for whom lung cancer screening with low-dose chest CT scans are appropriate are people who are between the ages of 55 and 74 and who have smoked 30 pack years (a pack year is one pack of cigarettes a day for one year) or more or who have smoked 30 pack years in the past and quit within the last 15 years and are now within that age range. Those individuals who meet those criteria-should they choose to be screened-should have a low dose chest CT scan every year until age 74. However...
Source: Dr. Len's Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer Authors: Tags: Cancer Care Early detection Lung Cancer Prevention Screening Tobacco Treatment Source Type: blogs