The World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) is underway in San Diego this week, and CT lung cancer screening has had a starring role at the meeting. The sessions come as lung screening continues to build momentum through 2024.
Low-dose CT lung screening got the green light from the USPSTF over a decade ago, but screening rates are still mired in the single digits in many regions.
- The evidence backing LDCT’s life-saving value has been building, however, and around the world countries are launching national screening programs to counter the smoking epidemic, the leading cause of preventable cancer death worldwide.
Sessions at WCLC 2024 have highlighted this progress, with many speakers focusing on ways to boost screening compliance or use tools like AI to detect more lung cancers.
Presentations on early lung cancer detection have included the following findings…
- Three years of lung screening starting in 2021 in Quebec produced a lung cancer detection rate of 1.6% in the first screening round, with 85% of cancers stage I or II.
- Advanced practitioner nurses are being trained in Australia to assess pulmonary nodules to alleviate workforce challenges when the country’s national lung screening program starts in July 2025.
- Using Coreline Soft’s AVIEW algorithm to read baseline LDCT exams helped BioMILD researchers move to a triennial screening interval without missing cancers.
- The QUILS system for lung cancer quality assurance helped assess quality across multiple LDCT screening sites in Kentucky.
- Over 10 years in which 2.3k patients were scanned, researchers found a 3.7% lung cancer detection rate and 100% survival for early-stage cancer.
- Among 4.2k patients, those who got screened had more stage I-II disease (72% vs. 37%) and higher rates of surgery-only treatment (56% vs. 25%) at three years.
- Using PanCan criteria to manage suspicious lung nodules worked better than Lung-RADS in 4.5k people screened, with fewer workup referrals (2.8% vs. 7.4%) and better PPV for high-risk malignancy (48% vs. 18%).
The Takeaway
This is just a selection of the exciting research being presented at WCLC 2024. It seems evident that CT lung screening’s future as a mainstream cancer test is closer than ever.
