Bharat's study found that 65% of lung cancer patients at Northwestern University were not eligible for screening under current guidelines. Women, Asian Americans Nonsmokers diagnosed with lung cancer are more likely to be ineligible for screening, the study found. (Another study published Wednesday in the journal Journal of the American Medical Associationfound that even among people eligible for screening, less than 20% were up to date.)
Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States. according to ASC. At the same time, mortality from this disease has decreased significantly in recent decades, largely due to smoking reduction.
“The incidence of lung cancer associated with smoking is declining, but as it declines, a larger proportion of people who get lung cancer have other causes of lung cancer,” said Dr. Helena Yu, a thoracic medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Most of the lung cancer patients she sees quit smoking decades ago or were heavy smokers and couldn't get screened. “We should probably be testing the broader population because we find this when we look at these different groups,” she said.
Things are even more difficult for her patients who have never smoked, including Goodwin.
“There are no clear environmental factors, we don't see that radon or secondhand smoke or anything in particular leads to this mutational lung cancer,” Yu said. “But there are probably factors that we don't know about in our modern world that influence both lung cancer and other cancers, such as Gastrointestinal and other cancers we're seeing on the rise“
In Bharat's study, the researchers simulated how many cases they would have identified if they expanded the screening criteria. If the guidelines included people aged 40 to 85 who smoked a pack a day for 10 years, the detection rate could be increased to 62%. If they had used a universal approach, testing all adults in this age group, regardless of smoking status, they would have detected 94% of cancers.
“Having such a universal program would not only allow us to reach the majority of these patients, but it would also allow us to identify the majority of these patients at an earlier stage, which would significantly improve the long-term survival of the entire population for lung cancer,” Bharat said.
Danielle Hoeg from Chicago was diagnosed with lung cancer. last year, when she was 43 years old. She never smoked.
“I just didn't believe it,” Hoeg said.
