CT lung cancer screening: where are we heading to?

Abstract

SUMMARY  Lung cancer screening has been the subject of controversies since the 1970s. After failure of chest x-ray and sputum cytology examination to decrease lung cancer mortality, there was a 15-year period of disillusion. Low-dose CT scan of the thorax provided a renewal of interest with prospective studies followed by randomized trials of which four have been published. Only one, the NLST trial involving 53,000 participants is positive with a 20% reduction in lung cancer specific mortality rate. The European studies are by far smaller, the largest being the Nelson study with 15,000 participants. There are some shortcomings and biases that must be known and well explained to the future participants to a lung cancer screening program. The cost/benefit ratio remains to be better analyzed.