Why some lung scans find harmless lumps
Overdiagnosis in low-dose computed tomography screening for lung cancer.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Overdiagnosis of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma is 78.9%—far higher than expected.
Most people assume all lung cancers are aggressive and deadly. Finding that nearly 8 in 10 of a specific type are harmless shatters the assumption that 'cancer = death sentence.'
Practical Takeaways
If you’re considering LDCT screening, ask your doctor: 'What’s the chance this finds a cancer that would never hurt me? And what are the odds I’ll need treatment I don’t need?'
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Overdiagnosis of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma is 78.9%—far higher than expected.
Most people assume all lung cancers are aggressive and deadly. Finding that nearly 8 in 10 of a specific type are harmless shatters the assumption that 'cancer = death sentence.'
Practical Takeaways
If you’re considering LDCT screening, ask your doctor: 'What’s the chance this finds a cancer that would never hurt me? And what are the odds I’ll need treatment I don’t need?'
Publication
Journal
JAMA internal medicine
Year
2014
Authors
E. Patz, P. Pinsky, C. Gatsonis, J. Sicks, B. Kramer, M. Tammemägi, C. Chiles, W. Black, D. Aberle
Related Content
Claims (6)
Finding and treating very slow-growing cancers through aggressive screening doesn’t help people live longer overall — it just finds cancers that wouldn’t have hurt them anyway.
When lung cancer is found through a special low-dose CT scan, almost 8 out of 10 of a certain type of tumor might be harmless and would never hurt the person if left alone—only the scan found it, and it wouldn’t have caused any problems otherwise.
When doctors use a special low-dose CT scan to find lung cancer early, about 1 in 5 of the cancers they find might never cause harm — meaning the person would never have known about them if not for the scan, and they wouldn’t need treatment.
When doctors use a low-dose CT scan to check high-risk people for lung cancer, about 1 in 5 of the cancers they find might never have caused any problems — meaning those people could be treated for something that didn’t need treating, leading to stress, side effects, and extra costs.
If you screen 320 people who are at high risk for lung cancer with a special scan, you might save one life—but you’ll also find and treat about 1.4 cancers that would never have hurt them. So for every 100 lives saved, around 138 people get treated for cancers that didn’t need treatment.