Lung cancer screening is really a program. It's not just a CT scan. And so lung cancer screening at our institution, at National Jewish Health, involves a centralized approach where patients are first contacted by our navigators who review the eligibility criteria or insurance coverage. And then the patients come in to National Jewish Health and meet with one of our advanced practice providers.
And that visit is very important for having the patients understand all about why they're doing the lung cancer screening.
The patient then goes on to get their CT scan and the advanced practice provider calls the patient with the results.
To be eligible for lung cancer screening, you need to be within 50 to 80 years of age, have a significant smoking history, can either be currently smoking, or you need to have quit within the past 15 years.
The easiest thing to do is to call our lung cancer screening program. Our navigators are very used to talking to patients on the phone and determining if they're eligible, and particularly if they're eligible for insurance coverage.
During a lung cancer screening visit, we talk to the patient about their smoking history.
If they're ready to quit, we talk about smoking cessation.
And then I like to talk to them about what's going to happen with the actual scan.
The scan goes from the top of the throat to the top of the abdomen.
You hear about a scan and you don't know if you have to go into that narrow little space. But you don't.
It's pretty quick and easy.
Pulmonary nodules are spots in the lungs. They can be tiny or as large as a golf ball.
We're not only looking for the size and shape of nodule, we think about their smoking history and their probability and risk for lung cancer.
Not all nodules are cancerous.
The commitment is really to annual screening.
Then even on a tiny nodule that might be found initially, that doesn't really require any immediate follow up. When the patient comes back the next year, we may see some growth in that nodule.
And so the real value is being able to identify patients at that early stage when the cancer would be curable.
So we're fortunate at National Jewish Health, where we have the very highest quality equipment.
Not only are the patients imaged initially with a CT scanner that can provide very high detail image at a low radiation dose.
And in our program, I'm very proud to report that the majority, way over, in fact, the national average of the cases that we find are early stage, and that's where we're saving lives.
I think it's really important to get this scan because lung cancer screening can save your life.
