More people with a long history of smoking should be tested for lung cancer each year, even if they have stopped in recent years, according to new guidelines issued by a panel of health experts on Tuesday.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force assesses and regularly guides preventative health care services in the country. Although officially a government agency, their guidelines are drawn up by relevant outside experts who are brought in on a voluntary basis. The agency’s experts released on Tuesday new guidelines for the examination of lung cancer, which was also published in the medical journal JAMA.
According to the recommendations, people between the ages of 50 and 80 with at least 20 years of smoking should be screened annually for lung cancer. A packing year is defined as the equivalent of a pack of 20 cigarettes per day for a year. People who have smoked so much but have stopped since are still advised to be screened as long as they have stopped for the past 15 years. Those who quit more than 15 years ago or had conditions that would affect their life expectancy or that they were willing to undergo lung surgery are not recommended for screening.
The USPTF’s recommendations are not just polite advice; it has a big impact on insurance coverage, which means more Americans are now eligible for lung cancer screening through their current health plans.
The new guidelines are more comprehensive than the most recent series, released in 2013. The previous version appealed to the performance of people between 55 and 80 years old with 30 years of smoking. According to the USPTF authors, new evidence has since shown the likely benefits of earlier investigations for people with a lighter smoking history. A model study was also published in JAMA on Tuesday, for example: found that these new criteria will prevent more deaths due to lung cancer in the long run compared to the previous lead, with little added damage.
G / O Media can get a commission
The study modeled what would happen if all eligible and in 1960 eligible for lung cancer were examined using a low-dose CT scan, the standard screening test. The new guidelines would be expected to prevent 503 deaths per 100,000 people selected, compared to 381 preventable deaths per 100,000 under the old criteria.
It is important that the new guidelines can also help shorten certain gaps in cancer care. Although smoking is the major risk factor for lung cancer, the incidence of lung cancer is higher among black Americans than other racial groups. thought that black and Native Americans run the risk of lung cancer at lower smoking levels. Women can also be selected more now, because they usually smoke less than men.
“According to our analyzes, the new recommendations will reduce the difference in lung cancer fitness by gender and race, which will hopefully lead to a reduction in the difference in lung cancer in the US,” said Rafael Meza, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School. of public health that led the new modeling study published in JAMA, in a statement released by the university.
At present, lung cancer is the second most commonmmon cancer in the US, which covers more than 200,000 confirmed cases per year. And although the number of deaths from lung cancer has been steadily declining over the decades, it is still the leading cause of cancer deaths in the US. That’s about 131,880 Americans. expect to die from it.