Overdiagnosis and overtreatment of ground-glass nodule-like lung cancer

Abstract

Lung cancer has had one of the highest incidences and mortality in the world over the last few decades, which has aided in the promotion and popularization of screening for lung ground-glass nodules (GGNs). People have great psychological anxiety about GGN because of the chance that it will develop into lung cancer, which makes clinical treatment of GGN a generally excessive phenomenon. Overdiagnosis in screening has recently been mentioned in the literature. An important research emphasis of screening is how to reduce the incidence of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. This paper discusses from different aspects how to characterize the occurrence of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, how to reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment, and future screening, follow-up, and treatment approaches.

Keywords: ground-glass nodules; lung cancer; overdiagnosis; overtreatment; screening.