Blog: Let's Talk about EarlyCDT-Lung

Lung cancer kills more people than any other kind of cancer. Additionally, tobacco smoking accounts for approximately 87 percent of lung cancer deaths.

Given these two brute facts, it seems strange that people – especially current and former smokers – are not flocking to their physician for testing. After all, most people are aware that early detection is the most effective weapon in the fight against cancer.

So why do so many people at high risk for lung cancer – especially smokers and former smokers – fail to be take advantage of available testing options for early detection?

People 50 years of age and older who have had pneumonia are recommended to have a follow-up chest x-ray to check for lung cancer. This recommendation is based on a study of 3,398 patients who were hospitalized or seen in the emergency room for pneumonia in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, between 2000 and 2002.

According to a summary published in JournalWatch, the study found the newly diagnosed lung cancer incidence after 90 days to be 1.1 percent, with only 40 percent of the patients having chest x-rays within 90 days. At one year, the incidence was 1.7 percent.

A total of 57 patients were diagnosed with lung cancer within one year. Of that number, only one was younger than 50. Another summary of the study points out that 79 of the patients in the study were diagnosed with lung cancer at five years. However, only 76 of the 79 patients were over 50 years old.

Even among some medical professionals, a stigma has been attached to people with lung cancer. The assumption – too often voiced to the lung cancer patients themselves – is that smoking has led to their disease, and it is the patient’s fault it has occurred. Even patients who have never smoked have been accused of being “closet smokers.”

As Lynne Eldridge, M.D., has pointed out that lung cancer among people who have never smoked is now seen as the sixth-leading cause of death from cancer in the United States.

These facts do not change the reality that smoking is still the number-one risk factor for lung cancer. But there are other risk factors that cannot be ignored, such as family history of cancer, exposure to secondhand smoke, other cancer-causing agents and more.

That lung cancer can occur in non-smokers is not news. Joe Paterno, the storied football coach at Pennsylvania State University, is a case in point. Coach Paterno died of small-cell carcinoma on January 22, 2012.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, reporting on Paterno’s death, quotes oncologist Barbara Campling from the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “It’s extremely rare to have small-cell cancer in a nonsmoker,” Campling says. About 13 percent of lung cancers are small-cell carcinomas, Campling continues. However, these cancers usually occur in current smokers or people who have been heavy smokers in the past.