To screen for lung cancer, the lung scanner is preferred in the United States and not in France. A new report from Tufts Medical Center challenges this strategy by advocating screening based on individual risk score.
Screening for lung cancer based on individual risk has the potential to save more lives than the current United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations that use the lung scanner.
The USPSTF recommends annual low-dose scanning for lung cancer in people aged 55 to 80 who smoke or who have quit within the past 15 years.
This may be explained by the fact that these criteria do not take into account other people at high risk of lung cancer who would have been selected by individual risk calculators taking into account only demographic, clinical and smoking characteristics.
Cost-effectiveness is a game-changer
Most current recommendations for lung cancer screening, including those from the USPSTTF, use screening criteria based on the results of the national lung screening trial.
Researchers at Tufts Medical Center compared the cost-effectiveness of different types of screening by estimating quality-adjusted life years (QS). The authors explain that lung cancer is still one of the deadliest types of cancer in the United States and that early detection and treatment is an effective way to improve life expectancy.
Although the identification of people to be screened is based on individual risk based on a risk score is superior to CT, the real question is why screening, by any method, not? are most often not screened.
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