New guidelines for lung cancer screening are being strongly recommended. Created by a lung screening and surveillance task force established by the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) and led by medical professionals from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the guidelines were published this week in the online edition of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
Because recent research shows low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) is valuable in reducing lung cancer deaths, the AATS task force recommends an annual LDCT lung cancer screening for:
- Smokers and former smokers between the ages of 55 and 79 who have smoked the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years
- Smokers and former smokers between the ages of 50 and 79 who have smoked the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years and have other factors that raise their risk of developing lung cancer
- Long-term lung cancer survivors up to the age of 79 (to detect a second case of primary lung cancer)
These guidelines suggest screening for patients up to age 79 years versus 74 years with other screening recommendations. These guidelines also address lung cancer survivors and bring the total number of Americans eligible for screening to 94 million. For individuals with conditions that would rule out successful treatment for lung cancer, the AATS task force recommends that screening not be performed.
The chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery at BWH and president-elect of the AATS, David Sugarbaker, MD, came up with the idea of creating the lung cancer screening guidelines. He said, “This work will result in a greater chance for patients stricken with early lung cancer to receive curative therapy.”
Michael Jaklitsch, MD, a thoracic surgeon at BWH and a cochair of the task force said, “Now, for the first time in history, there is a clear screening tool that identifies early stages of lung cancer, when treatment is most successful. Our analysis shows this tool of low-dose CT scans to be safe and very cost-efficient.”
Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital.