If you are a smoker or former smoker – or you know someone who is – you need to be aware of the recommendations for lung cancer screening, which is a relatively new idea when it comes to this particular cancer.
Unlike regular mammography or prostate exams that routinely screen for cancer, lung cancer didn’t have any standard screening option until recently. A 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed the success of CT scans in detecting early lung cancer. Previously, it wasn’t until a patient went to their doctor with symptoms of advanced disease, such as coughing up blood, that tests for lung cancer were conducted. Now, patients can advocate for screening if they are at risk.
Kentucky has the highest lung cancer rate in the country, which is why Dr. Royce Calhoun, a thoracic surgeon with St. Elizabeth Healthcare, whose work primarily focuses on patients with lung cancer, wants to spread the word about who is at risk and who should request screening with a CT scan.
If you meet these criteria, you should request a CT scan to screen for lung cancer:
- Age 55 or older
- A 30-year history of smoking a pack a day, or a variation of that number such as two packs a day for 15 years or half a pack a day for 60 years
- A current smoker or a former smoker who quit smoking within the last 15 years
“Even if you quit 12 years ago and have those risk factors, you are still at risk. [News anchor] Peter Jennings died of metastatic lung cancer and he had quit for like 11 years before,” Calhoun said. “We see it all the time, people quit a long time ago and they think it is in their rearview mirror, but it’s not.”
Survival rates improve drastically when people who are at risk are screened and lung cancer is caught early. If someone comes in with symptoms like coughing, coughing up blood, a hoarse voice, pain or losing weight and they are found to have lung cancer, that means the disease is advanced at that point. Five-year survival rates are just 15 percent for advanced disease, Calhoun said.
“If you have those symptoms, it is advanced at that point,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it can’t be cured, but the chance that it can be cured is definitely going down.”
But with the introduction of CT screening in people at risk who don’t have symptoms, if lung cancer is discovered, it is typically stage 1 and there is a much higher probability of curing people. The five-year survival rate jumps to 80 percent, Calhoun said.
There will be an estimated 230,000 cases of lung cancer in the U.S. and 158,000 Americans will die from the disease in 2016. Lung cancer accounts for approximately 27 percent of all cancer deaths, according to the American Lung Association.
“Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer of men and women, more than colon, breast and prostate cancer combined – not in prevalence, but in terms of deaths,” Calhoun said.
Although 85 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, there are other risk factors.
“Chemicals and fumes, arsenic, cadmium, radon, air pollution, diesel exhaust, basically anything you breathe in that isn’t just clean air – you are doing damage to your lungs,” Calhoun said.
