Focus on lung cancer screening

Abstract

Poor survival of lung cancer (LC) patients depends on several factors first of all the delay in the diagnosis, considering that the majority of patients have an advanced-stage disease at the time of diagnosis. In this context, use of screening to increase the percentage of early LC detection can play a crucial role. After the preliminary unsatisfactory experiences with chest X-rays and sputum cytology, low dose computed tomography (LDCT) has become the best method for LC screening. In particular, several randomized LDCT screening trials conducted in the last year showed significant reductions in LC mortality in high-risk subjects. This review focuses on both recent advances in LC screening and some open questions.

Keywords: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC); low dose computed tomography (LDCT); lung cancer screening (LC screening).