Increased Screening Rates and Diagnostic Testing

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The Challenges

There are key challenges facing the improvement of screening and diagnosis in lung cancer

1) Globally, many countries have not yet adopted lung cancer screening despite evidence suggesting that lung cancer screening saves lives.9,10

 

2) Where screening has been adopted, engaging the high risk population remains a challenge meaning too few are screened.11

 

 

3) There remain barriers to accurate and timely lung cancer staging which prevents patients from receiving optimal treatment.5

 

Our solutions

Advancing screening 

The Alliance is helping to amass a global registry of CT imaging data to enhance screening in early-stage lung cancer. This project is part of the Early Lung Imaging Confederation (ELIC), an IASLC-owned, secured, cloud-based archive of shared CT lung cancer images, founded in 2018.12

ELIC could become an important global resource for lung cancer researchers and care teams. The collection of images and data are intended to support development of better analysis and detection tools. They also promise to assist researchers who might only have access to a small number of CT images in their centers can interrogate thousands of images to greatly expand their knowledge base and validate software analysis tools.

In July 2021, the Alliance released a report, Lung Cancer Screening: The Cost of Inaction, which reviews the clinical and cost effectiveness evidence for lung cancer screening in targeted populations using low-dose CT scans. The report outlines key issues surrounding screening, why it is needed, and how earlier diagnosis of lung cancer presents a crucial opportunity to reduce costs while saving lives. Read the report here.

Improving Staging

With the support of the Alliance, the IASLC is working to standardize international lung cancer staging guidelines and deepen insights into disease progression. Insights from this effort will inform the 9th Edition of the Tumor, Node and Metastasis (TNM) Staging System, the most common method for staging lung cancer, and guide physicians in identifying the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.13

References

  1. Gco.iarc.fr. (2020). All Cancers Factsheet. Available at: https://gco.iarc.fr/today/data/factsheets/cancers/39-All-cancers-fact-sheet.pdf [Accessed February 2021].
  2. Lung.org. (2020). Lung Cancer Fact Sheet. Available at: https://www.lung.org/lung-health-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/lung-cancer/resource-library/lung-cancer-fact-sheet#:~:text=The%20five%2Dyear%20survival%20rate,rate%20is%20only%205%20percent. [Accessed February 2021].
  3. Yousaf-Khan U, et al. Final Screening Round of the NELSON Lung Cancer Screening Trial: The Effect of a 2.5-year Screening Interval. Thorax. 2017;72:48–56.
  4. The National Lung Screening Trial Research Team. Reduced Lung-cancer Mortality with Low-dose Computed Tomographic Screening. N Engl J Med. 2011;365(5):395–409.
  5. Midthun D. Early detection of lung cancer. F1000Research. 2016;5(F1000 Faculty Rev):739
  6. NICE. The diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer (update). Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK99021/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK99021.pdf. Accessed August 2019
  7. Mathur S, et al. Personalised medicine could transform health care. Biomed Rep. 2017; (1) 3-5
  8. Jones G, et al. Recent advances in the management of lung cancer. Clinical Medicine. 2018;18(2):s41–s6
  9. EpiCast Report: NSCLC Epidemiology Forecast to 2025. GlobalData. 2016.
  10. Cancer.Net. Lung Cancer - Non-Small Cell - Statistics. Available at www.cancer.net/cancer-types/lung-cancer-non-small-cell/statistics. Accessed May 2019
  11. Jemal a & Fedewa SA. Lung Cancer Screening With Low-Dose Computed Tomography in the United States—2010 to 2015. JAMA Oncol. 2017;3(9):1278-1281
  12. IASLC.org. IASLC Successfully Pilots Early Lung Imaging Confederation Project. Available at https://www.iaslc.org/news/iaslc-successfully-pilots-early-lung-imaging-confederation-project-0. Accessed August 2019
  13. Giroux, DJ et al. The IASLC Lung Cancer Staging Project: A Renewed Call to Participation. Journal of Thoracic Oncology. 2018;13(6):801-809
  14. Jones G, et al. Recent advances in the management of lung cancer. Clinical Medicine. 2018;18(2):s41–s6
  15. Mascaux C, et al. Personalised medicine for nonsmall cell lung cancer. European Respiratory Review. 2017;26
  16. IASLC.org. IASLC Pathology Committee. Available at https://www.iaslc.org/research-education/iaslc-pathology-committee. Accessed August 2019