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Thoracic Onocology Consortium _Nodules


Donna G

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Well yesterday I got to the meeting of twin cities thoracic Onocology Consortium. Very Interesting day. Since I was told I had 2 nodules this spring that part would be of interest to me!

Dr Swenson of Mayo spoke re low dose Spiral CT for early diagnosis as a screening tool. In 1998 they had 4520 volunteers , 50 and older + smokers. In 5 yrs they found 68 with Stage I cancer. They found 3356 Nodules, or 74% of the patients had nodules! Of these nodules 98% were benign. He said there are 50,000 people in the national screening study. So far no one yet recommends screening. It could lead to a 10 % mortality reduction, but it is too costly to follow up on all those benign or slow growing ( as BAC) tumors. 10 % reduction is saving 16,000 people!.

He said the ideal would be to come up with a serum test for lung cancer. - Boy that would be nice.

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Thanks for sharing, Donna.... One thing bothers me, though. It is when dealing with Lung Cancer that the subject of cost vs benefit comes up. I rarely encounter actual mention of cost factors when dealing with other diseases, even those which are extremely rare, and where research and development of treatments will be of benefit to just a very few.

But if it's Lung Cancer the second thing out is usually the cost of treating (just after bringing up the issue of Smoking.)

Sigh...........

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Thanx for posting the latest on screening by CT....Yea, is expensive stuff. There is some interesting effort going on to develope a blood test, to detect the :"protein trails" that cancer cells generate in the bloodstream. Sounds like nothing real soon, but wouldnt it be nice...no needle biops or bronchos needed...sigh. Maybe someday this LC nightmare could be significantly reduced in trauma effect, anyway in the early diagnostic stages. OK...catch ;ya later...Rich B.

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I thought Henschke showed it is cost effective. A low dose CT scan only costs around $400.

Factor in that if a lung cancer is caught early, then it is sometimes only surgery vs x rounds of chemo.

I was guessing that the surgery is less expensive than chemo and I am right according to the article below

http://www.physiciansweekly.com/pc.asp? ... tionid=150

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