More people with a long history of smoking should be tested annually for lung cancer, even if they have given up in recent years, according to new guidelines released Tuesday by a government-backed group of health experts.
The US Preventive Services Task Force is currently reviewing and guiding preventive health care services in the country. Although officially a government agency, their guidelines are developed by relevant external experts brought in on a voluntary basis. On Tuesday, the agency’s experts issued new guidelines for lung cancer screening, which were also published in the medical journal JAMA.
The recommendations call for people between the ages of 50 and 80 with at least 20 years of smoking to be screened annually for lung cancer. One year of packaging is defined as smoking the equivalent of one package – which has 20 cigarettes – per day for one year. People who have smoked so much, but since they quit, are still advised to be examined, as long as they have quit in the last 15 years. Those who gave up more than 15 years ago or who have conditions that would affect their life expectancy or desire to undergo lung surgery are not recommended for screening.
The USPTF recommendations are not just polite advice; they greatly influence insurance coverage, which means that more Americans should now be eligible for lung cancer screening through their current health plans.
The new guidelines are more extensive than the most recent sets, which were launched in 2013. The previous version provided for screening people between the ages of 55 and 80, with 30 years of smoking. According to the authors of the USPTF, new evidence since then has shown the likely benefits of previous screening for people with a mild smoking history. A modeling study also published in JAMA on Tuesday, for example, found that these new criteria would prevent more long-term deaths from lung cancer compared to previous recommendations, with little added harm.
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The study modeled what would happen if everyone who was eligible and born in 1960 was screened for lung cancer by a low-dose CT scan, the standard screening test. The new guidelines are expected to prevent 503 deaths per 100,000 people examined, compared to 381 preventable deaths per 100,000, according to the old criteria.
Importantly, the new guidelines could also help shorten certain gaps in cancer care. Although smoking remains the leading risk factor for lung cancer, the incidence of lung cancer is higher in black Americans than other racial groups and is thinking that blacks and Native Americans are more at risk for lung cancer at lower levels of smoking. Women may also be screened more now, as they generally smoke less on average than men.
“According to our analysis, the new recommendations will reduce disparities in lung cancer eligibility by gender and race, which we hope will lead to reductions in lung cancer disparities in the United States,” said Rafael Meza, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health that led the new modeling research published in JAMA, said in a statement released by the university.
Currently, lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the US, representing over 200,000 confirmed cases per year. And, although the number of deaths from lung cancer has steadily declined over the decades, it is still the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. waiting to die of it.