Lung cancer screening prevents unnecessary surgery, study reveals

A new study suggests that lung cancer screening programs can decrease the rates of unnecessary surgeries and trauma.

According to Newsmax, lung cancer computerized tomography (CT) scans for smokers is now covered by Medicare and other types of insurance. It is often recommended as this life-saving screening can make a difference if the cancer is detected early. However, there have been worries of false-positives and unnecessary surgeries for patients that have been found to have no cancer at all. A new study suggested cases of false-positives among lung cancer patients are far and few in between.

Lead researchers Bran Walker and Dr. Christina Williamson from the Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts looked at the data of more than 1,600 patients. The patients underwent LDCT lung cancer screenings from January 2012 to June 2014.

In the results, they found that those who needed surgeries for non-lung cancer diagnosis were only a handful and there were only four out of the total number of patients who needed surgery for the benign form of the disease.

"Surgical intervention for a non-lung cancer diagnosis was rare-five out of 1,654 patients or 0.30 percent," Walker said, via the report by News-Medical. "That incidence is comparable to the 0.62 percent rate found in the National Lung Screening Trial that helped secure screening coverage in the US."

In all patients that were screened, 25 ha surgery because of the CT scan results. In the 25, 20 were found to have lung cancer with 18 having early lung cancer. According to the report by WebMD, the new study confirms that low-dose CT scan screening can reduce lung cancer mortality by up to 20 percent. For CT scan results that were suspicious, experts will advise on what to do next.

"Lung cancer screening saves lives, and our study serves as a model for how to set up a screening program that is safe and effective for patients," said Dr. Christina Williamson, another author of the study, via a press release published in EurekAlert. "A screening program should use a standardized reporting system and have input from board-certified cardiothoracic surgeons as part of a multidisciplinary team evaluating CT scan findings."

She adds that the adoption of lung cancer screening will benefit many folks as this can reduce the number of unnecessary operations and deaths from the disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lung cancer is the leading cause of deaths for cancer and the second most common cause of death in men and women in the United States. The most common ways of reducing lung cancer risk is quitting the habit and avoiding secondhand smoke.