Screening for survival

NEW FALSE CREEK HEALTHCARE CENTRE PROGRAM PROVIDES CT SCREENING TO DETECT LUNG CANCER

It wasn’t that long ago when cigarette vending machines could be found in hospitals, when a pack could be purchased with spare change and saying the words “smoking, please” in a restaurant meant something.

Of course, those were the bad old days, back before legislators, regulators and pretty much everyone else, grasped that encouraging smoking is both unconscionable ethics and wretched policy.

And so today, a mix of pricey sin taxes, prohibitive advertising rules, tough public space health regulations, and startling on-pack imagery has combined to persuade some smokers to quit before suffering permanent health damage, just as it has prevented others from lighting up in the first place. That’s the good news. Now, the bad. There are still thousands of Canadians who continue to smoke, and remain at increased risk of hearing their doctor say those most terrifying words: you have lung cancer. Eighty to 90 percent of lung cancers in Canada are due to smoking, and smokers are 12 to 20 times more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers.

The goal of False Creek Healthcare Centre’s new Lung Cancer Screening Program is to provide early detection, and improved treatment outcomes, for people who are at increased risk of lung cancer. As described by Dr. Dennis Janzen: “early detection of lung cancer can have a major impact on survival rates.”

And the numbers back up Dr. Janzen’s claim. The U.S. National Cancer Institute data indicates that lung cancer treatment is more successful in early stages. Fiveyear survival rates are 70-90 per cent for early stage tumours with limited spread, however survival is less than 15 per cent for larger tumours that have spread to other locations. Roughly 60 per cent of all lung cancer cases are diagnosed in these late stages.

If all goes as planned, the False Creek Healthcare Centre’s new Lung Cancer Screening Program will help thousands of current and former smokers make sure that they’re in the right statistical group, the one with improved lung-cancer treatment outcomes.