Dr. Alexis Chidi explains how low-dose CT scans can detect lung cancer early—before symptoms appear, when it’s most treatable.
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Lung cancer screening is actually one of the most powerful tools we have to identify lung cancer early in people who have a high risk. Depending on people's smoking history and their age, they might be eligible to do a CT scan. It's a low dose of radiation, and that will basically allow us to identify whether they have any lung nodules that we need to keep an eye on. The reason that this is important is because screening is proven to identify lung nodules when they're small, before patients even have symptoms of anything that might be a lung cancer.
One of the problems with lung cancer is that often people don't develop symptoms until they're at a very late stage. Really the biggest benefit of lung cancer screening is being able to find those lung nodules at a time when we have lots of options for treating them and treatment might actually result in a cure.