WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — Each year, more people in the United States die from lung cancer than from colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.
“We see that lung cancer is actually the number two diagnosed cancer in the United States and the number one killer for cancer diagnosis, in males and females,” said Dr. Amit Tandon, Medical Director of Intervention Pulmonology at AdventHealth Wesley Chapel.
That’s why the American Cancer Society recently significantly changed the guidelines for who is considered to be at high risk for developing lung cancer to reduce that number.
That means more people can now qualify for a yearly screening, which is usually a CT scan.
Those changes include:
- People aged 50-80 who currently or formerly smoked
- Anyone with a 20+ pack-year history
- “Which means they’ve smoked at least one pack per day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10 years, or have smoked that total amount at any point in their life would qualify for lung cancer screenings,” said Tandon.
- The most important change is that the number of years since quitting smoking is no longer a qualifier for starting or stopping yearly screenings
Experts believe cigarette smoking and nicotine cause the majority of lung cancer cases.
Tandon said, “80% of lung cancers are due to smoking-related causes."
Researchers are studying to see if other types of smoking, like marijuana or vaping, could also cause cancer.
“It’s all depending on purity, right? So there’s always chemicals involved in different vaping pens, marijuana, whether it’s mixed with other compounds or not. Then dispensaries, right? You’re hoping you’re getting 100% pure product, but we’re not sure. Research is being done on these. It’s too early to say,” said Tandon.
Doctors believe the changes to these guidelines will save lives.
“We are seeing that when we are diagnosing lung cancer, it is being done at later stages, stage three and four for 50-60% of the population. And then life expectancy from there is also decreased and unable to treat and potentially cure those patients. This is why we’ve come up with lung cancer screening guidelines to reduce the number of cancer-related deaths and complications,” said Tandon.
Now nearly 5 million more people will be eligible for annual screenings.
As part of an effort to catch and cure lung cancer earlier, AdventHealth told ABC Action News that their team has been working to treat lung cancer patients faster.
“Once this nodule or mass is found on the lung cancer screening, we get you to the point of diagnosis and treatment quicker than the national average. The national average is about 56 days. We’ve got it down from the day the referral comes into our clinic to the time of diagnosis and back to the provider at 21 days,” said Tandon.
Doctors recommend that people talk to their primary care physician if they have a history of smoking.
