Cancer Study Finds Promise in CAT Scans for Smokers
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 26, 2006; Page A10
A new study has found that it is possible to find a large number of "silent" cancers in the lungs of heavy smokers by periodically screening them with CAT scans. When the tumors are then surgically removed, most people live five years or more, in striking contrast to patients whose cancers are found only after they experience symptoms.
The study of nearly 32,000 people in eight countries boosts hope that early detection by CAT scans may reduce the death toll of lung cancer, much as mammography has done for breast cancer. But while the research clearly shows that the interval between diagnosis and death was longer in screened patients, it does not definitively show they lived longer -- a subtle difference with significant public health consequences.
Lung cancer kills about 162,000 Americans a year and is the leading cause of cancer death in men and women. Only 15 percent of people with the disease survive five years from the time it is diagnosed....
Some people, including many treatment advocates, think there is enough evidence to urge all heavy smokers to have routine CAT scans. Others, including researchers and policymakers in the government, say it is a question that will not be settled for five or six years, when other studies are complete.
The new research, which appears in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, seems destined to heat up that argument....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102501397.html