Lung cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in the U.S., but getting high-risk patients identified and scanned early on in their disease massively upped their chances of survival.
That’s according to a new study by Mount Sinai researchers at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. They found that diagnosing early-stage lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening “drastically improves” the survival rate of cancer patients when assessed over two decades.
Drilling down into the numbers, the 20-year survival rate was measured across 1,285 patients who were screened in the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program and were later diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer.
The data show that, while the overall survival of the participants was 80%, the survival rate for the 139 participants with nonsolid cancerous lung nodules and the 155 participants with nodules that had a partly solid consistency was 100%.
For the 991 participants with solid nodules, meanwhile, the survival rate was 73%, and for participants with early, stage 1A cancers, the 20-year survival rate was an impressive 92%.
That’s a major difference in rates when you look at the countrywide average five-year survival rate for all lung cancer patients, which is just 18.6%.
That’s a very low percentage for such a prevalent and deadly disease: The American Cancer Society estimates that in the U.S. this year, there will be around 236,000 new cases of lung cancer with around 130,180 deaths from the disease.
That low survival rate is, the researchers say, because only 16% of lung cancers are diagnosed at an early stage. Up that rate dramatically, and you should dramatically up the rate of lung cancer survival across the board, they add in the report.
But don’t wait until symptoms hit, the researchers urge, as these typically come in later stage forms of the disease, which are harder to treat. They want more people to sign up for annual screening to catch the disease before symptoms occur, giving patients better odds at survival.
But data show that fewer than 6% of the people eligible for lung cancer screening actually get it.
Many pharma companies with lung cancer drugs on the market, including AstraZeneca, Roche and most recently Merck, are also running screening awareness campaigns while tackling misunderstanding and taboo around CT scans.
This includes the wrong belief that scans are painful and use needles (which they do not) and the taboo of smoking, which can delay patients getting scans.
“While screening doesn’t prevent cancers from occurring, it is an important tool in identifying lung cancers in their early stage when they can be surgically removed,” said the study’s lead author, Claudia Henschke, M.D., Ph.D., professor of diagnostic, molecular and interventional radiology and director of the Early Lung and Cardiac Action Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York in a release.
“Ultimately, anyone interested in being screened needs to know that if they are unfortunate enough to develop lung cancer, it can be cured if found early. Symptoms occur mainly in late-stage lung cancer. Thus, the best way to find early-stage lung cancer is by enrolling in an annual screening program.”