Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in United States.
Lung CT scan is an option for smokers or former smokers to early identify the cancer, opt for effective treatment and decrease the mortality rate among people with lung cancer. A computerized tomography (CT) scanning is used for lungs to identify the tumors when they are still small.
But currently it is surrounded with many controversies due to lack of scientific evidence for screening results may do more good than harm. According to the results from a resent research, it proved that lung CT scan screening detected three times more than expected cancers and ten times more than expected surgeries leading to lower rates of advanced cancer in people and deaths from lung cancer.
It is not necessary that if you go through lung CT scan screening, your chances of survival with lung cancer will improve at any stage.
As some of the lung cancers that are detected are very slow growing in nature (indolent) that might probably could have never caused any symptoms or death, while others are very aggressive in nature that any vigorous treatment would have not changed a person’s destiny. In other words the survival statistics may be increased by lung CT scan screening, however it would not ensure the life span of a person.
Compared to a standard X-ray, lung CT scan screening diagnoses cancer at an early stage and decreases the number of people dying from lung cancer. Although chest X-rays for screening lung cancer detected more cancers, but doesn’t relate to decreased mortality with X-ray screening.
On the other hand it does more harm than good as frequent X-ray screening is related to more ratio of death in people suffering from lung cancer.
Nine out of ten lung cancer patients are smokers. Smokers are at 10-20 times at higher risk to get lung cancer when compared to those of non-smokers.
If lung cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, then surgical removal of the cancer is possible. However in the process of screening lung cancer at an early stage there are repeated lung scans, biopsies which may do more harm to a person if lung cancer is not present.
A major disadvantage of a CT scan is that it is so expert in detecting nodules or spots on the lungs; it would show one or more nodules in half of the people that are screened. Some of these may be too tiny for a surgery or even non cancerous.
