Mather Hospital is now offering free lung cancer screenings for certain high risk smokers and former smokers to diagnose lung cancer in its earliest most treatable stages.
An influential panel of medical experts recently recommended that some former and current heavy smokers should be screened annually for lung cancer, which could prevent as many as 20,000 deaths a year. Lung cancer is the leading single cancer killer in the U.S. and cigarette smoking is the most important risk factor in the development of lung cancer.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said that low-dose computed tomography (CT) should be offered to people at high risk – those between ages 55 and 80 who smoked the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years.
Mather’s Lung Cancer Screening Program uses a state-of-the-art, 320-slice CT scanner to perform the test at the lowest possible radiation dose. For more information, contact Eileen Zaoutis, RN, nurse navigator for Mather’s Lung Cancer Screening Program, at 631-686-2500.
The panel’s recommendation followed the release last summer of the results of a decade-long study of current and former heavy smokers ages 55 to 74 known as the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST). Participants were required to have a smoking history of at least 30 pack-years without signs, symptoms, or a history of lung cancer.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored the study, which established the use of low-dose CT scans as the first validated screening test that can reduce mortality due to lung cancer.