Getting patients to attend cancer screening exams is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare. But a new study in JAMA Network Open should provide motivation, showing that people who showed up for annual CT lung cancer screening exams had better clinical outcomes than those who didn’t.
Low cancer screening adherence frustrates clinicians and healthcare policy experts alike, but nowhere is the situation as dire as in CT lung cancer screening.
- U.S. lung screening adherence rates languished in the single digits for years after the exam was approved by the USPSTF, and while there has been some recent improvement, screening rates are nowhere near those of more established exams like mammography.
At the same time, statistical modeling studies (and common sense) suggest that complying with screening would reduce lung cancer mortality.
- So researchers from multiple institutions in the U.S. and Canada decided to track adherence to a real-world CT lung screening program consisting of a baseline scan and then two follow-up scans roughly a year apart.
In all, 10.2k eligible adults were screened from 2015 to 2018, with researchers finding …
- Screening adherence rates fell from the first follow-up round to the second (61% to 51%).
- People who attended the first follow-up round were more likely to attend the second (67% vs. 25%).
- Patients who completed both screening rounds had higher lung cancer diagnosis rates (1% vs. 0.2%).
- Patients who attended the second round and got a lung cancer diagnosis were more likely to have early-stage disease (73% vs. 25%) and less likely to have late-stage disease (21% vs. 58%).
In analyzing the results, researchers said the drop-off in adherence rates between the first and second follow-up screening rounds represented an opportunity to reach out to people who missed the first round and get them to the second.
- This position dovetails with other recent research underscoring the importance of patient navigators in guiding eligible people to lung cancer screening.
The Takeaway
So as radiology and other disciplines look to build on the momentum behind CT lung cancer screening, what’s the key to success in improving patient outcomes? Sometimes, it’s just getting people to show up.
