AUGUSTA, Ga. (March 9, 2017) - The first year of free lung cancer screening in the Augusta, Georgia area found more than double the rate seen in a previous large, national study as well as a Massachusetts-based screening for this number one cancer killer.

The higher rates, coupled with the majority of cases being found in early, treatable stages, point toward the need for ongoing, accessible free screening in high-risk populations and underserved regions, say researchers at the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University. High risk includes those who have smoked a pack of cigarettes daily for two or three decades and, if they've quit smoking, did so less than 15 years ago.

The screening of 264 high-risk individuals within a 150-mile radius of Augusta found 3 percent had lung cancer and 75 percent of those were caught early, said Dr. Carsten Schroeder, thoracic oncology surgeon at the Georgia Cancer Center and Medical College of Georgia at AU. The researchers note that a percentage of the patients presenting at screening had early symptoms, like a persistent cough, so the rate of cancer detection in patients who showed no indication of disease was 2.2 percent, still double the rates of previous studies.
"Lung cancer is still the number one cancer killer in the United States and in our world," Schroeder said. "If we catch it in the early stages, ideally before symptoms surface, we can operate and patients can have an overall survival rate of 90 percent." Five-year survival rates are closer to 5 percent in more advanced disease.

The pioneering National Lung Screening Trial, which began in 2002 and included 33 largely urban centers, found 292 cases of lung cancer among the 26,722 high-risk individuals screened in the first year, for a rate of 1.1 percent. That study also provided the first broad evidence that low-dose computed tomography, or LDCT, was a more effective screening tool than the traditional chest X-ray. A decade later, the Massachusetts-based Lahey Hospital & Medical Center, on which the Augusta screening was modeled, found a .6 percent prevalence in the first 10 months of screening.

Like the previous experiences, the Augusta area screening that started in 2014, also reiterated the ability of LDCT to find lung cancer early, said Schroeder, corresponding author of the study in Southern Medical Journal.

Six of the eight cases found in the screening were considered potentially curable with surgery. Positive results were communicated directly to the participant's primary care provider; negative results were communicated to primary care docs and participants, along with a reminder for another screening in a year.

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