“There is growing evidence that a very simple, five-minute, low-dose, low-radiation scan can really save the lives of many people,” said Dr. Bernard J. Park, a lung surgeon and clinical director of the lung. screening service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. About 75 to 85 percent of cancers found with this test are in stage 1 and are curable only with surgery or radiation, he estimated.
Dr. Park said that many people who signed up for screening stopped smoking or were trying to quit, but that some saw the sharp images as a sign that they could continue smoking.
Dr. Smith said the American Cancer Society should revise its own guidelines for lung cancer screening and that its advice would likely be similar to that of the task force.
In 2013, the American Academy of Family Physicians refused to recommend or against CT screening for lung cancer, saying there was not enough evidence. But the chairman, Dr. Ada Stewart, said in an emailed statement on Monday that the academy would review the new evidence from the task force and decide whether to update its own recommendation to its members.
Globally, there were 2.09 million new cases of lung cancer in 2018, and the disease is also the leading cause of cancer deaths, killing 1.76 million people that year, according to the World Health Organization.
There were 228,820 new cases of lung cancer in the United States in 2020, and 135,720 people died from it, according to the National Cancer Institute. About 90 percent of cases occur in people who smoke, and the risk of current smokers to develop the disease is about 20 times greater than that of nonsmokers.
Only about 20.5 percent of patients survive five years after diagnosis. Most cases are diagnosed late, after the cancer has started to spread. But if it can be found and treated early, a cure is possible, say the doctors.