Updated lung cancer screening guidelines: Who is eligible - Detroit Free Press

“They sent me to Karmanos” Cancer Institute in Detroit, said Patterson, 64, who lives in the New Center area of the city.

Lawrence MacDonald wishes for more lung cancer patients with happy endings like Patterson’s.

Only about 22% of people diagnosed with lung cancer live beyond the five-year mark, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In the early stages of lung cancer, when it’s most treatable, few people have any symptoms.

“That's why we have to screen for them,” MacDonald said.

Others at risk for developing lung cancer include people with significant asbestos exposure and other carcinogens like nickel, chromium and arsenic, as well as exposure to radon, a colorless, odorless gas that naturally occurs in the earth and can get trapped inside buildings.

“The most important prognostic factor for whether or not someone will be a long-term survivor of a lung cancer is whether it can be surgically removed,” said Dr.

But in the U.S., less than 7% of people who are eligible for lung cancer screenings are getting tested, MacDonald said.

The test is widely available, relatively inexpensive and for the people at highest risk for developing lung cancer — current and former cigarette smokers ages 50 and older — the screening is covered by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance.

And when at-risk people get the test every year, their chances of dying from lung cancer plummets.

It would be on the radio and everybody would be signing up for it," MacDonald said.

MacDonald and nearly a dozen other doctors from Karmanos Cancer Institute, the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health, Ascension Michigan and others are coming together to improve rates of lung cancer screening by working to educate primary care physicians about the need to prescribe it for patients who qualify.

On Thursday, MacDonald quite literally shone a light on lung cancer, holding a flashlight with dozens of medical providers, patients and their loved ones at the DMC’s Charach Cancer Treatment Center in Commerce Township at an event to raise awareness.

Michael Simoff, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Henry Ford Health, said he is trying to secure funding to pay for a van with a CT scanner inside so his team can bring screening to the places where people live, to areas where smoking rates are high and access to medical care is low.

“The idea would be to take it to people in the urban areas and the rural areas,” Simoff said.

The guidelines for who qualifies for lung cancer screening were developed in 2013 by the U.S.

Preventive Service Task Force and were updated in 2021 to increase the number of people who are eligible.

Too many people aren't even aware they're eligible, MacDonald said.

A 2021 Prevent Cancer Foundation survey found that two-thirds of Americans weren't getting recommended cancer screenings and one-third weren't even aware of which cancer screenings they needed.

“It's difficult to get people to slow down and take the time to do what they need to do,” said Barnwell, who also serves on the DMC’s governing board.

While about 7% of Americans overall who are eligible for lung cancer screening get tested, rates are even lower for African Americans, who MacDonald said, “get screened even less.

But, MacDonald said, it’s especially important to reach the Black community with screening.

“As it turns out, interestingly, populations of Black patients probably have more benefit than other patients” with screening, he said.

Poverty plays a part, too, in low screening rates for lung cancer.

A low-dose CT scan for lung cancer screening costs about $260 without insurance at Huron Valley Sinai Hospital.

“I can't tell you how many times I see lung cancer patients when they first go to an emergency room because they don't have a primary care physician and now they're short of breath and there is a huge lung tumor," she said.

People who are still smoking cigarettes might also avoid lung cancer screening because they feel guilt or shame, and might not want to be told they should quit, Simoff said.

Social stigma and fear also are rolled into the hesitancy to get lung cancer screening for some people, said Mamdani, who also is the director of the lung cancer screening program at Karmanos.

But there is one universal motivator that seems to push people to seek screening, she said.

“People who have a family member diagnosed with some type of a cancer — it doesn't have to be lung cancer, but any kind of cancer — are more likely to be willing to get screened for different types of cancer if they meet the criteria.”   .

Mamdani worries, too, about the people who don’t meet the eligibility criteria for lung cancer screening, but who still are at high risk for developing the disease.

So those patients should have access to lung cancer screening, but they don't because the current guidelines don't include those nuances,” she said.

“Firefighters are at really high risk of developing lung cancer,” she said, because of on-the-job smoke inhalation.

“There has to be an increase in awareness and I think a movement to drive the government agencies and insurance companies to cover lung cancer screening scans for our firefighters.”

Lung cancer screening also can’t be a one-and-done kind of thing, Mamdani said

MacDonald recommended a lung cancer screening test

MacDonald, I just said, ‘I'm done.’ ”