A new report out by the American Lung Association shows Kentucky is making strides when it comes to lung cancer treatment and screenings.

But as the 2023 State of Lung cancer report reveals, Kentucky has a lot more work to do to improve the survival rates for those with the disease.

A look at that now and today's medical news.

Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer across the entire country and even larger than that.

Right.

And the reason for that is because it is typically asymptomatic until it's in its most advanced stages.

The sad part today we have the highest lung cancer incidence in the nation and we have the highest lung cancer death rate in the nation.

We moved up to second best in the nation for a lung cancer screening, a high risk individuals.

This is huge because this is where it all begins.

Early detection is the key to early and effective treatment that leads to survival.

And so this is the first building block in the chain to changing Kentucky's lung cancer story.

But we're still only screening 10% ish of high risk individuals in our state.

We're just talking right now about the high risk individuals as defined by the United States Preventive Services Task Force.

Those people in that age range of 50 to 80 years old with a 20 pack year history, which means a pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for ten years and so on.

And also we have quit in the last 15 years.

We need to do better.

And we can we need to reach communities all across Kentucky and access to quality screening.

So it's a matter of a focused and ongoing going effort to put the the processes in place to achieve that goal of broader reach across the state for high risk individuals, where we're in the average range for surgical treatment or lack of treatment can change when when people understand that there are there are treatments.

It's not it's not it should not be a sense of nihilism or fatalism.

And for that matter, there are increasing advances in new treatments like immunotherapy and things of that nature.

And in Kentucky, we recently passed a biomarker testing coverage bill so that we can now cover the and the testing for defining or deciding the certain the specific tumor type A patient might have in order to provide targeted therapies.

And that's another enormous advancement.

And over time, then we begin to move the needle on early treatment.

And when you get early treatment because of early detection, you move the needle on survivability.

Radon is another area of concern for Kentucky.

Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer.

According to the report, almost 37% of radon test results in the state were at or above levels that require corrective measures to reduce exposure.