Lung cancer screening

Abstract

Lung cancer is the most common and most fatal cancer, causing 266,000 deaths every year in Europe and 1.6 m worldwide. In most patients lung cancer is diagnosed in advanced and thus non-curable stages. Despite new promising therapies, lung cancer survival is still poor, with a relative survival of 39 and 13% at 1 and 5 years since diagnosis in Europe. When detected early and treated adequately, the survival rate increases dramatically, up to overall 5 years survival rate of more than 80% for tumors sized 2 cm or less. Multidetector low-dose CT is able to detect lung cancer in early stages. Moreover, screening with low-dose CT can reduce lung cancer mortality by 20% compared to standard chest X-ray.