Calling for lung cancer screening
WATERLOO— Raymond Laflamme is “still alive and counting my blessings” thanks to an X-ray that caught his lung cancer when it was treatable.
“I was very lucky,” said Laflamme, founder and former director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. “Many others are not as lucky as me.”
Laflamme is joining Lung Cancer Canada’s call for a screening program to ensure that people who are at risk are checked for cancer much earlier to greatly improve the odds of survival.
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women, killing more Canadians than breast, colon and prostate cancers combined.
“That’s because it is diagnosed late,” said Dr. Paul WheatleyPrice, president of Lung Cancer Canada. “Fifty per cent of people diagnosed with lung cancer already have incurable disease at the point they’re diagnosed.”
The five-year survival rate for lung cancer in Canada is 17 per cent.
Currently, no comprehensive screening programs exist in Canada. Yet two large randomized trials show a significant drop in mortality rates through screening with a CT scan.
“There is no reason not to do this,” Wheatley-Price said. “It just needs political will.”
Laflamme, 58, a renowned physicist, noticed he felt short of breath after a large meal in spring 2016.
Further testing found it was cancer — already spread to lymph nodes. Still, Laflamme was lucky.
“I was just on the border, so I could be operated.”
His story shows that screening is crucial.
“Lung cancer can grow substantially before it causes any symptoms,” Wheatley-Price said.