Most people diagnosed with lung cancer are dead within a year.
The nation’s biggest cancer killer has no equivalent of the mammogram or the colonoscopy — no easy way to detect it early. By the time most people are diagnosed, it’s too late to save them.
All that could change.
Tests using high-tech scanners called spiral CTs can spot lung tumors so early that most patients will live, researchers said in a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“This is a profound and watershed moment for the lung cancer community that we won’t really see for years to come,’’ said Laurie Fenton, president of the Lung Cancer Alliance, a national advocacy group. “It’s the most important news for this community that has ever happened.”
In the largest study of early screening, researchers at 38 cancer centers in seven countries screened more than 31,000 people at high risk for lung cancer. Participants, all age 40 or older, were current or former smokers, had been exposed to such environmental hazards as asbestos, or to secondhand smoke.
Those screenings spotted early-stage lung tumors in more than 400 patients. Their survival rate over 10 years: 88 percent. Among the 302 who immediately had tumors removed, the 10-year survival rate was 92 percent.
“We’ve never seen these numbers in stage one lung cancer,’’ said Dr. Michael Unger, author of the Journal editorial and director of the early detection and prevention lung cancer program at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “It’s 70 percent at best. And most people are not detected in stage one.”
The overall five-year survival rate for lung cancer is a far more dismal 15 percent.
“Ultimately, screening is all about preventing people from dying,’’ said Dr. David Yankelevitz, a study co-author and radiology and cardiothoracic surgery professor at Cornell University. “I think we’ve shown that here.”
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