Dive Brief:
- Almost 20% of patients with a positive history for cigarette smoking who are diagnosed with lung cancer by CT scan don't have a clinically significant disease, according to a study appearing in JAMA Internal Medicine.
- Right now, guidelines recommend CT testing for people with a 30-pack year history of smoking, or for former smokers who quit within the last 15 years.
- When tested by both chest X-rays and low-dose CT scans, the CT diagnosed 18.5% more people with lung cancer than the chest X-ray did.
Dive Insight:
What's scary about this study is that at present there's no way to know which patients are being overdiagnosed, though scientists are working on finding biomarkers which will help clinicians target those patients who are truly in danger. And if a patient is overdiagnosed, they may end up being harmed by complications from treatment. Researchers are now working on methods to address the harms that can come from screening, and to weigh them against the risks of letting the potentially lethal cancer remain untreated.