10-Year Lung Cancer-Specific Survival for Low-Dose CT Persists

TUESDAY, Dec. 5, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- For an expanded International-Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) cohort who underwent annual low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening, the 10-year lung cancer-specific survival of 80 percent reported in 2006 has persisted at 20 years, according to a study published online Nov. 7 in Radiology.

Claudia I. Henschke, Ph.D., M.D., from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues determined the 20-year lung cancer-specific survival of participants diagnosed with first primary lung cancer through annual low-dose CT screening in the I-ELCAP cohort to update the cure rate. Eligible participants were aged 40 years or older and had current or former cigarette use, or had been exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke.

The researchers found that 1,257 (1.4 percent) of the 89,404 I-ELCAP participants were diagnosed with a first primary lung cancer, with a median smoking history of 43.0 pack-years. The median duration of follow-up was 105 months. At pretreatment CT, the frequency of clinical stage 1 was 81 percent (1,017 of 1,257 patients). Both the 10- and 20-year lung cancer-specific survival was 81 percent; for the 181 participants with pathologic T1aN0M0 lung cancer, it was 95 percent.

"Future focus should be on identifying lung cancer even earlier, perhaps during the first 20 doublings rather than the last 20 doublings, as can currently be achieved using low-dose CT," the authors write.

Several authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical and medical technology industries.

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