A team of investigators led by Fabien Maldonado, MD, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt, and Tobias Peikert, MD, assistant professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, has identified a new technology to address false positives in CT-based lung cancer screening. The study was published in the latest issue of PLOS One.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, claiming approximately 160,000 patients annually. The disease is lethal because it is often found at late stages when it is not curable.
In 2011, the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) demonstrated a 20 percent relative reduction in lung cancer mortality with the use of annual low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening among high-risk patients aged 55 to 74. As a result of this study, lung screening programs have been widely adopted and VUMC’s Lung Screening Program recently reached a milestone, enrolling more than 700 patients and performing more than 1,000 CT screening examinations.
While the nation’s screening programs have identified at least one pulmonary nodule in nearly 40 percent of patients, 96 percent of those nodules are eventually found to be benign.
“This high rate of false positives creates a dilemma for physicians and patients because patients may be subjected to unnecessary tests and procedures that may have risks,” said Maldonado, who also serves as associate professor of Thoracic Surgery and Mechanical Engineering. “The need for additional testing also adds to the nation’s health care costs.”
You can read the rest of the article detailing Maldonado's research here.