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F o rce guidelines recommend annual screening for lung cancer with lowdose As November computed marks tomography Lung Cancer ( LDCT ) Awareness Month , we must talk about why for the a subset lung cancer of adults screening . To qualify rate
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( a pack guidelines a day for 20 recommend years , two annual packs screening a day for lung 10 years cancer , or another with low-dose equivalent computed ), and currently tomography smoke ( LDCT ) for a subset of adults . To qualify , a person must be 50 to 80 years old , have a 20 or have quit within the past 15 years . The latest guidelines issued in “ pack-year ” smoking history ( a pack a day for 20 years , two packs a day for 2021 10 years expanded , or another eligibility equivalent ( https ://), www and . advisory currently . com smoke / sponsored or have / lungcancer past 15 ) to years an estimated . The latest 14.5 guidelines million people issued in in the 2021 U . S expanded . eligibility to an
quit within the estimated 14.5 million people in the U . S .
A recent study showed screening the entire eligible population would save the lives of an estimated 23,444 people diagnosed with lung cancer each year .
So why don ’ t health providers screen more people ? The main reason appears to be that most providers and patients don ’ t know annual lung cancer screening is available or recommended . The USPSTF only began recommending screening in 2013 . Other types of routine cancer screening have been around much longer . The medical community took longer to adopt screening because they were not convinced of its benefits . Doctors worried about false positives , encouraging unnecessary testing , and treating harmless lung nodules . And of course , for a long time , treatment options for the disease were limited , and the prognosis poor . So lung cancer screening remained marginal compared to other types of cancer screening .
Another factor is stigma around cigarette smoking . To be eligible , patients must have a smoking history and patients often do not feel comfortable reporting theirs accurately . Public health efforts to reduce smoking succeeded in stigmatizing tobacco use , reducing widespread use , but also making it more difficult for health providers to work with patients who do smoke . Experts have debated whether the aggressive tactics used to stigmatize tobacco use have made it harder to treat lung cancer .
Many healthcare providers are also unfamiliar with the eligibility criteria and insurance coverage for screening , as opposed to other types of cancers . High-risk and low-income patients may not have access to insurance to pay for screenings , and until this year , only private insurers were required to cover annual screenings . In February , the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid announced expansion of coverage for lung cancer screening to “ improve health outcomes for people with lung cancer .”
Another challenge for early detection is restrictive screening guidelines . Nearly 25 % of people diagnosed with lung cancer don ’ t qualify for annual screening because of age or lack of smoking history . Black men are the most likely of any group to develop and die of lung cancer , but Black women , Hispanic Americans , and women all face significant disparities in eligibility for screening .