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The question often arises if a reliable screening tool for lung cancer could be implemented in much the same way as mammograms are used for breast cancer, could the mortality rates for this disease be decreased? Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that annual screening using CAT scans helps in early detection of Stage 1 lung cancer in patients and that this early detection may increase survival. Lung cancer is characterized by the presence of malignant tumors in the lungs. It is the most lethal of cancers worldwide, causing up to 3 million deaths annually. The leading cause of lung cancer is smoking. Only one in ten patients diagnosed with this disease will survive the next five years. Computed tomography (CT) is a medical imaging method used to generate a three-dimensional image of the inside of an object from a large series of two-dimensional X-ray images taken around a single axis of rotation. More than 31000 individuals participated in the study. CT screening detected 484 people with lung cancer, of which 85% were in Stage I. The Stage I cancer patients who underwent surgical resection within 1 month had a 92% survival rate for the next 10 years. All the patients who did not undergo treatment died within 5 years. The researchers note that this is only a preliminary study and that the lack of a control group make the results difficult to apply as the standard. The NIH is currently conducting the National Lung Screening Trial with 54000 participants to answer such questions with the results due at the end of the decade. These results illustrate that early detection of lung cancer by CT screening may aid in reducing the existing high mortality rate and cost of treatment by approximately half.
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