Low dose CT screening for lung cancer could save 12 000 US lives a year, researchers claim

If current and former smokers aged 55 to 74 who smoked a pack a day for 30 years, or an equivalent amount, received low dose computed tomography screening, about 12 000 deaths from lung cancer could be avoided each year in the United States, a study published online in Cancer on 25 February has found.1

The number of people potentially saved by screening is about 7.6% of the lung cancer deaths each year in the US. About 443 000 Americans die each year from lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death.

Researchers from the American Cancer Society based their study on results from the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial conducted from …