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American Lung Association urges cancer screening

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. The American Lung Association is promoting lung cancer screening as an "opportunity to save more lives."

According to the American Lung Association, every two and half minutes, a person in the U.S. is diagnosed with lung cancer, the country's leading cause of cancer death. Dr. Jacob Sands is a thoracic medial oncologist.

"Lung cancer is unfortunately a diagnosis that does not cause symptoms, typically when it's early stage, and so in many cases, people get diagnosed only after it has spread," said Sands. "Lung screening is a way that we can detect it when it's early, and still curable. And so it's really important for the audience to know about savedbythescan.org, where they can go and plug in their own information, or the information of their loved ones to see if they qualify for lung screening. Because if they do, then it's really important to get that screening scan so that the if lung cancer happens, it can be diagnosed when still curable."

The ALA continues raising awareness about lung cancer screening, as a part of its “Saved By The Scan” campaign. Since the initiative first launched five years ago, the campaign has encouraged thousands of people to get screened and catch the disease early, including lung cancer survivor Denise Lee.

"I saw a billboard by the side of the road that talked about early detection for lung cancer," Lee said. "I had been a longtime smoker, I smoked from the age of 14 to 54. And I quit, and I saw a billboard by the side of the road. I was stuck in traffic coming home from work. So I saw it and had an opportunity to read it and I said, OK, I think I need to get that done.' I had no symptoms. And I quite frankly didn't know anything about Saved By The Scan or know there was a CT Scan prior to seeing that billboard. I found out about it. I got it done."

The CDC says 9 out of 10 lung cancers are caused by smoking cigarettes and to it, you should avoid smoking or quit. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends yearly lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography or CT scan for people with a history of smoking, especially those between 50 and 80 years old.

Dr. Ella Kazerooni is a Professor of Radiology at the University of Michigan.

"We talk about high risk individuals who smoke, smoking what we call pack years, the number of years you smoke times the number of packs a day of smoke," said Kazerooni. "So 20 Pack years of cigarette smoking or more is considered the threshold to be high risk for lung cancer. And if people have any questions, they should talk to their primary care physician to find out more. The good news is that the percent of individuals in the United States who are smoking has gone down and continues to go down through lots of public health efforts and working with individuals and patients to do that. And the number of lung cancers diagnosed each year is also coming down because of the decline in the smoking rates. But still, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women. And I think for women, most people don't realize that lung cancer kills more women each year than breast cancer does."

The New York State Department of Health says each year about 6,900 men and about 7,300 women are diagnosed with lung cancer and about 4,000 men and about 3,800 women die from the disease. Lung cancer death rates among men and women have been declining since 1995, but the decline among women has been slower.

The ALA says if lung cancer is caught early before it spreads, the likelihood of surviving 5 years or more improves to 61%. However, less than 6 perent of eligible Americans have had a lung cancer screening.

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.
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