Enhanced risk-based lung cancer screening may prevent more deaths than current approaches

Challenge

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends annual computed tomography (CT) screening for individuals between 55 and 80 years old with a history of heavy smoking (at least one pack of cigarettes per day for 30 years or more) and who currently smoke or have quit within the past 15 years. However, selecting ever-smokers for screening using individualized lung cancer risk calculations may be more effective and efficient at preventing deaths than current USPSTF recommendations.

Advance

Hormuzd Katki, Ph.D., Anil Chaturvedi, Ph.D., and colleagues, used data from two lung cancer screening studies and a U.S. health survey to develop and validate risk models for selecting smokers and former smokers who may be candidates for lung cancer screening with low-dose CT, and estimated the performance of risk-based selection into lung screening programs.

Impact

Because the researchers estimated that risk-based selection for screening might prevent more lung-cancer deaths, with greater effectiveness and efficiency, than would current screening recommendations, they have created an online lung-cancer screening risk-tool to provide individualized risk information for patients considering entering lung screening.

Publications

Katki HA, Kovalchik SA, Berg CD, et al. Development and validation of risk models to select ever-smokers for CT lung cancer screening. JAMA. 2016;315(21):2300-2311

Access the online lung cancer screening risk tool