Doctors look toward screening for lung cancer

Lung Cancer Screening May Someday Be Possible

Lung cancer claims more lives every year than the annual death toll from breast, prostate and colorectal cancer combined. There is no effective screening test for the early detection of lung cancer, which has led to a discouraging survival rate of 5 years for 15% of patients.

To combat this dismal statistic researchers in Canada are beginning a massive research project aimed at finding a simple method to screen patients for lung cancer so that it can be detected early enough to be treated.

"A screen needs to be simple, safe, accessible and affordable," Victor Ling, scientific director of the Terry Fox Research Institute, said in an interview. "We don't have that now."

The study plans to use volunteers who are currently between the ages of 50 and 75 and have had a minimum of 10 "pack years" of smoking. The eligible patients will undergo tests that range from questionnaires to blood draws in the hopes of determining factors that are unique to those diagnosed with lung cancer.

Bronchoscopy is another of the many tests patients will undergo. The bronchoscopy, a lighted scope is inserted in bronchial tubes and will help to determine if the patient currently has cancerous tumors. In a related study regarding lung cancer diagnosisses, researchers compared the efficacy of traditional bronchoscopy with the success of computed tomography bronchoscopy. The results of the study found that more research needs to be done on these forms of CT guided bronchoscopy.

"We failed to demonstrate a significant difference between CT scan-guided bronchoscopy and conventional bronchoscopy for the diagnosis of lung cancer in peripheral lesions and mediastinal lymph nodes," the investigators report.

In the Canadian study researchers believe that if a screening method is developed early detection will become the norm resulting in an increase in the five year survival rate to 70%.

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