Efficacy of Lung Cancer Screening: Results of 4 Case-Control Studies Recently Conducted

Abstract

Concerning the question of the effectiveness of lung cancer screening by previous randomized controlled trials, the resultsof four case-control studies, conducted recently by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Japan, were reported at the IASLC 2000 congress, and revealed that lung cancer screening could decrease the risk for lung cancer deaths by 30-60%.However, the influence of lung cancer screening lasted for only 1 year, while that of some cancer screening programs forother organs lasted for more than 1 year, which indicates that, for lung cancer patients, the opportunity of cure would belost by a miss in one screening. Since lung cancer screening with insufficient quality control does not lead to a decrease inlung cancer death, every effort for the improvement of quality control in screening systems must be made. Informationdisclosure on the quality control of each screening system, offered by many companies, should be strongly promotedthrough activating the Prefectural Council for Quality Assurance of Mass Screening.