The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.<\/p>\n
Dennis Schmidt started smoking as a teenager, when that was so unexceptional that his Catholic high school designated outdoor \u201csenior smoking quarters,\u201d where students in their final year could take cigarette breaks. He smoked a pack of menthols daily for nearly 40 years.<\/p>\n
This story also ran on The New York Times. It can be republished for free.<\/p>\n
As a registered nurse at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and a former Air Force medic, he knew this was a bad idea. \u201cI made a couple of attempts to quit and they failed miserably,\u201d said Schmidt, now 75.<\/p>\n
Not until 2007 was he able to stop, using a newly approved prescription drug that reduced cigarette cravings. \u201cI put them down and never went back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Despite his years as a healthcare professional, Schmidt was unaware that lung cancer screening had become available for current and past smokers. The influential U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent expert panel, recommended it in 2013.<\/p>\n
Besides, he said, \u201cI thought I was in the clear after all these years of not smoking.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in 2021, his primary care doctor, running down a list of questions at his annual Medicare wellness visit, asked whether he\u2019d be willing to undergo a CT scan to detect lung cancer, and he agreed. A few days later, the results popped up on his patient portal: adenocarcinoma.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was stunning to read those words,\u201d Schmidt recalled. \u201cI knew what that was: cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with sharp declines in smoking, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, with\u00a0125,000 deaths estimated\u00a0for this year, far exceeding fatal cases of colon, breast, or prostate cancer.<\/p>\n
Yet in 2024, of the patients eligible for lung cancer screening,\u00a0only about a quarter\u00a0\u2014 or\u00a0even fewer, depending on which data researchers analyzed \u2014 were up to date on the recommended annual scans.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbysmally low, especially because of how deadly lung cancer is,\u201d said Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang, a thoracic surgeon at Mass General Brigham and the senior author of\u00a0a recent JAMA editorial\u00a0about the screening rates.<\/p>\n
Patients over 65 were more likely than younger people to be up to date. Still, only about a third were screened regularly, a\u00a0far lower proportion than received other cancer screenings. Schmidt, for instance, had dutifully undergone colonoscopies and prostate cancer tests for years.<\/p>\n
Data from national registries shows that older adults face\u00a0sharply higher lung cancer risks. \u201cAge is a risk factor for cancer generally,\u201d said Priti Bandi, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society. But seniors may also accumulate more years as smokers. About a fifth of lung cancer cases arise in people who never smoked, but smoking remains the most common cause, \u201ceven if the exposure happened much earlier in your life,\u201d Bandi said.<\/p>\n
Screening has been shown to save lives. In 2011,\u00a0a landmark clinical trial\u00a0demonstrated that annual screening with low-dose CT scans reduced lung cancer deaths by 20% compared with the chest X-rays used previously. That prompted the initial task force recommendation.<\/p>\n