Chest x-rays may detect lung cancer early

Screening chest x-ray might help in detecting a substantial number of lung cancers at an early potentially curable stage. Researchers from the Hubert H. Humphrey Cancer Center, Robbinsdale, Minnesota conducted initial chest x-rays of 77,465 people in the screening arm of the trial, out of which, around 5,991 - nearly 9 percent had results that were deemed suspicious for lung cancer. Upon further testing, 126 individuals were diagnosed with lung cancer and importantly, 44 percent of the tumors were early localized stage I cancers. Screening, is predicated on the assumption that it can lead to discovery of dangerous cancers at an earlier, more localised stage when it is more likely to be curable. In the current study, nearly 50 percent of screen-detected lung cancer is localised. Historically, in unscreened populations, only 15 percent to 20 percent of lung cancers are diagnosed while localised. Worldwide, one million people die from lung cancer each year. When lung cancer first develops, there may be no symptoms at all. When a patient starts to experience symptoms, such as a cough that doesn't go away, the cancer is often advanced and treatment is rarely effective. In the current study, high rates of lung cancers were found in current smokers and in former smokers (6.3 and 4.9 per 1000 screens). Among those who never smoked, the lung cancer detection rate was 0.4 per 1000 screens. This group accounted for 11 percent of the cancer identified. As little as a 20 percent mortality reduction associated with screening could save 32,000 lives annually in the US alone.