A research paper published today (Monday 23 March) in a leading medical journal, Nature Medicine, shows that screening for lung cancer dramatically increases early-stage detection, particularly in socioeconomically deprived areas, helping to save lives.
Between April 2019 and March 2024, more than 2.5 million people aged between 55-74 who were former or current smokers were invited to a lung health check in parts of England.
From this, a total of 7,193 lung cancers were found through low-dose computed tomography (CT) scans.
Crucially, 75.7% of these cancers were found at the earliest stages 1 and 2.
“Normally, without screening, it’s the other way round and 75% of lung cancers are found at stage 3 and 4, when treatment is much less likely to be effective,” explains Professor Robert Rintoul, Honorary Respiratory Consultant at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and co-author of the paper.
“Screening has flipped the script and changed the story of lung cancer. We are saving more lives.”
Professor Robert Rintoul
Lung cancer is the biggest cancer killer in the UK, claiming about 33,000 lives per year.
This is because symptoms often don’t develop until the disease is more advanced, making treatment such as surgery more difficult.
“Early-stage lung cancers have typically been caught as incidental findings, for example someone who comes to hospital for a scan on a broken shoulder and then we see a shadow on the lung,” added Professor Rintoul, who is also the Co-Clinical Director for Lung Cancer Screening in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.
“But through the targeted screening programme, we’re now catching more lung cancers before people even realise they have it.
“This has a big impact on survival. Back in the mid-1990s, only about 5% of people survived lung cancer for five or more years. It rose to 15% by the mid-2010s and we now hope to have hit 25% in 2025.”
Professor Rintoul, who is also the Thoracic Cancer Programme Co-Lead at Cancer Research UK in Cambridge, concluded: “It is wonderful to see the impact that the NHS England Lung Cancer Screening Programme is having, saving thousands of lives by detecting cancer earlier when it can be treated with curative intent.
“This is the culmination of years of international research including the UK Lung Screening study undertaken, in part, at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.”
This early research in 2016 helped to demonstrate proof of concept for lung cancer screening and that it could be cost-effective
Full coverage of the lung cancer screening programme is expected across England by 2030.