New research shows that lung cancer screening can increase patients' odds of surviving the disease
should get screened annually. So should people in that age range who currently smoke or have quit within the past 15 years. “Lung cancer screening helps people live longer and healthier, because it catches lung cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage,” says Dr. John Wong, professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine and a member of USPSTF.
Lung-cancer patients often do not experience symptoms right away because at the early stages, the cancer is too small to cause noticeable symptoms, says Dr. Michael Nissenblatt, an oncologist in New Jersey . For instance, patients don’t start to feel pain until the cancer expands to the surface of the lung, where it can scratch against the walls of the chest. “Early stage lung cancer without screening simply won’t be discovered,” he says, unless a doctor catches it in a test for another illness.
Over the last few decades, says Nissenblatt, doctors have made major strides to treat lung cancer. In recent years, more patients are surviving stage three and four lung cancers thanks to, including a new course of treatment that follows a year of chemotherapy and radiation with a medicine called durvalumab. However, even with this treatment, Nissenblatt notes, more than half of people with stage three lung cancer die within five years.
Scientific advances in surgical techniques have also made treatment for early-stage lung cancer easier. While 20 years ago patients had to remain in the hospital for 10 days after surgery, he says, the newest procedures enable patients to leave the hospital the same day or the following morning. “It becomes no more of a problem than removing a gallbladder or removing an appendix,” he says.
For patients who fit a certain profile, the choice to screen is clear, Nissenblatt says. “The earlier the diagnosis,” he says, “the greater the opportunity we will have to cure you.”
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