Lung cancer is often difficult to detect before symptoms of the disease show themselves. By that time, tumors are typically fairly large and the cancer has likely spread to other organs, which makes treatment more difficult and less likely to succeed.
However, two recent studies have at least begun to provide hope for improving the current situation. One, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, focuses on chest x-rays and their effect on the lung cancer mortality rate, and the second compares the effectiveness of chest x-rays with low-dose CT scans. These studies have caused physicians to take a new look at early lung cancer detection.
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The results are in, and the message is that chest radiographs (x-rays) do not reduce the lung cancer mortality rate. This is the conclusion of a report published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The news about the ability of chest radiographs in the early detection of lung cancer supports the conclusions of randomized studies performed in the 1970s and 1980s. In the more recent study, lung cancer mortality among patients who received up to four annual chest radiographic screenings was compared with mortality among a control group that received normal care. After 13 years of follow-up, the study found no significant difference in mortality from lung cancer between the patient groups.
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