New Study Says Early Screening May Prevent Lung Cancer Deaths

JIM LEHRER:

Now, detecting and treating lung cancer, the most deadly of all cancers. A study in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine said screening could save the lives of many thousands of smokers, but some in the medical community have doubts.

Our health correspondent, Susan Dentzer, is here to explain.

Susan, first of all, give us the basic numbers on the deadliness of lung cancer.

SUSAN DENTZER, NewsHour Health Correspondent:

Well, Jim, cancer is the number two of killer of all Americans. And lung cancer is the deadliest of the cancers.

Essentially this year, 174,000 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer; 163,000 will die. In fact, more will die of lung cancer than the next five deadliest cancers combined, including breast and colon cancer. So it's a very deadly condition.

And with 45 million current smokers in the United States and an equivalent number of former smokers, we're going to have lung cancer with us in big numbers for a long, long time.

JIM LEHRER:

OK, so now this new study. Who did it, and what did it find?

SUSAN DENTZER:

The study grew originally out of Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, where a prominent researcher, Claudia Henschke, decided to get going several years ago on this study to find whether you could do for lung cancer what we've done for many other cancers, which is to say, "Detect them early, find cancers when they're small before they've spread, and, therefore, treat them effectively and save lives."

JIM LEHRER:

Which has not been the case for lung cancer up until now?

SUSAN DENTZER:

Which has not been the case. In fact, most lung cancers, far and away most of them, are found at late stage when patients are finally symptomatic, have symptoms. They're coughing, they're coughing up blood. And basically, for those people, 85 percent of people who are diagnosed with late-stage cancer are going to be dead within five years, as distinct from, say, breast cancer, where we've established, through mammography and other screening techniques, we can find breast cancers early and really save lives. At least that's what we believe.

So the issue was, could we do that for lung cancer? So they set up this large study. It's international, seven countries, including the United States, 38 centers. And a total of 31,500 people were screened with sophisticated, current generation CAT scanners, which essentially…