The question has always come up: how early is early detection when we are talking of lung cancer?

As 70% of new lung cancers are diagnosed in patients with late stage cancer when survival is at the poorest, the Lung Cancer Alliance aims to educate people at risk for lung cancer about the importance of yearly low-dose Computed Tomography (CT) screening to promote early detection of the disease.

A month after a landmark study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine which reported that a yearly low-dose CT screening for people at high risk can detect lung cancer at the earliest stage (thereby dramatically increasing their chance of survival), LCA launched screenforlungcancer.org

The current five-year survival rate for people diagnosed with lung cancer is only 15 percent. Remarkably, the study showed an estimated 92 percent ten-year survival rate for those whose cancers are detected early and removed immediately.

Screenforlungcancer.org is a website that provides information on the importance of screening and the screening process, tools for assessing a person's risk for developing lung cancer, and a directory of leading institutions with the highest screening standards.

By visiting the website, you can also experience the entire screening process by viewing videos of a person undergoing a CT scan and photographs.

Source: Lung Cancer Alliance Pressroom (a pdf file)

[Photo Credit: BBC]