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Using X-Rays to Find Lung Cancer
WASHINGTON -- Screening for lung cancer with chest X-rays can detect the cancer at an early stage, but it is too soon to say whether the tool would prevent deaths, according to results of a government-funded study looking at cancer-screening methods.
Currently, most lung cancer is diagnosed in advanced stages and most patients die within two years of being diagnosed. There is no routine method at present for detecting lung cancer, the leading cancer killer of both men and women, at an early stage, unlike cancers of the breast, prostate and colon.
Researchers, led by the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, wanted to know if routine chest X-rays could pick up the lung cancer sooner. The study will be published in today's edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
From 1993 to 2001, researchers enrolled 154,942 men and women who were aged 55 to 74, including current smokers, former smokers and those who had never smoked.
The participants are enrolled as part of a larger prostate, lung, colorectal and ovarian cancer screening trial that is looking at cancer-screening methods. About 67,000 men and women in the lung-cancer portion of the study received an initial chest X-ray.
The results showed that X-rays detected 126 cases of lung cancer, almost half of which were at stage one, considered the earliest stage.
However, Christine Berg, who oversees the PLCO trial, said the study showed the chest X-rays produced a high false-positive rate. The X-rays detected spots or tissues on the lungs of almost 6,000 patients requiring them to undergo additional testing. The 126 cases of lung cancer were confirmed after additional testing.