Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death among men and women.
Despite the advances in treatment over the last decades, 5 year survival rate of all lung cancer patients has remained largely unchanged (%18-only 18 of 100 patients survive at the end of 5 years period ). This is mostly due to late diagnosis. At the time of diagnosis most of the patients have either locally advanced (stage 3) or metastatic disease (stage 4) .
According to lung cancer 8th staging system, if a cancer tissue is equal or smaller than 1 cm without lymph node involvement and metastasis; it is classified as stage 1A1. İf you can detect the cancer at this stage and remove it by surgery; you can have a five year survival rate of 90%.
So the most important question is “how can we detect a lung cancer in early stages?”
Symptoms or x ray chest not accurate enough for early diagnosis
As most frequent symptoms of lung cancer such as cough wheezing and dyspnea are often attributed to other diseases such as COPD or smoking ; and alarming symptoms like hemoptysis, bone pain and seizures do occur at the late stages it is often very hard to have an early diagnosis relying on sypmtoms.
Lung cancer screening ? Which is “low dose ct scans for people without symptoms”
Clinical trials showed that screening healthy individuals with smoking history using low dose ct annualy increased early diagnosis rate and decreased the mortality rate from lung cancer by 20%
And yes ; 90% treatment success is possible for stage 1A1 lung cancer patients detected by screening.
