Slashing the previous claims that spiral CT scans for the early detection of lung cancer could significantly decrease deaths from this disease, a new study has come out uncovering a very shocking finding. According to this new finding, there is no evidence that screening for lung cancer with chest CT scans does anything to reduce deaths from lung cancer.
Moreover, the researchers who carried out this new study state that instead of helping patients, early detection of lung cancer through CT scans exposes such patients to several invasive and possibly unnecessary treatments. Replacing the previous claims with new one, Peter B. Bach, M.D., M.A.P.P., a lung physician and epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and the study’s first author said:
Ours is the first study to ask whether detecting very small growths in the lung by CT is the same as intercepting cancers before they spread and become incurable. We found an answer and it was, ‘NO’. Early detection and additional treatment did not save lives but did subject patients to invasive and possibly unnecessary treatments.
Where this study is a big shock to the notion, which propounds that early detection of lung cancer, makes it less intractable, at the same time it is a big blow the patients who had been considering that early detection of their lung cancer would help them fighting this deadly disease more successfully.
Image credit: FDA
Via: NPR