Screening for Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer among men and women in the United States. More people die each year of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancer combined. Despite new diagnostic techniques, the overall five-year survival rates remain about 14 percent, and most patients still present with advanced disease.1 There has long been interest in screening to detect lung cancers when they are smaller and presumably at earlier and more curable stages, as witnessed by the support for previous screening trials using chest radiography and cytologic examination of sputum. Unfortunately, these studies failed to . . .