Benefit small from lung cancer screening method

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A high-tech X-ray called a spiral CT scan may help reduce lung cancer deaths in smokers and former smokers, but only reduces their overall risk of premature death by 4 percent, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Heart disease, respiratory disease and other types of cancer are still highly likely to kill smokers and former smokers early, the team at Harvard Medical School and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, found.

Their study, published in the journal Radiology, will likely add to a debate on the value of screening smokers for lung cancer.

"Our study suggests that screening may be one way to reduce risk of death from lung cancer," Dr. Pamela McMahon of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard said in a statement.

"However, the number-one goal should still be to quit smoking, because it will reduce risk of death from many causes, including lung cancer."

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States -- the American Cancer Society estimates it will kill 168,840 people in 2008. About 87 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking.

It is so deadly in part because it causes few symptoms in early stages -- only 15 percent of lung tumors are found before they have spread. If diagnosed in the earliest stages, half of lung cancer patients live five years or more, but that survival rate drops to 2 percent for people diagnosed in later stages.

Some experts have proposed spiral computed tomography, or spiral CT scans, as a way to screen smokers and other high-risk people.

McMahon's team looked at a study done at the Mayo Clinic of 1,520 current and former smokers who got helical, or spiral, CT scans. They entered data into a computer model of lung cancer development.