4 ms·

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them! Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT sca

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them! Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT scans use ionizing radiation. Have CT scans gotten much more efficient (regarding radiation dose) in recent years?

evantbyrne 3y ago
A person with 20 years of smoking history that waits for symptoms before getting tested might as well sign their own death certificate. CT scans aren't something that a person with a low risk profile would have routinely for a wide variety of reasons, which is why bringing an affordable liquid biopsy to market is so important. A lot of work has been done to make CT scans theoretically valuable to a wider audience, but that is not going to translate to widespread early cancer detection in-practice as evidenced by the >90% of eligible patients that never get tested.
briHass 3y ago
Yes. The one specifically designed for lung cancer screening is a 'low-dose' CT scan, that is usually around 1/5th of a standard CT scan. This is similar to the low-dose CT scan used for identifying heart disease, a coronary calcium scan. In fact, there some research showing that a single scan can do both at the same time (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4), quite well, especially coupled with ML analysis of the scans. For both of these diseases, it seems like the small amount of radiation (2-3x normal yearly background) is well worth the radiation risk done twice a decade for low risk (>40 y/o) and perhaps up to yearly for high-risk former/current heavy smokers (>50 y/o), which is the current recommendation. Even out-of-pocket, these scans tend to be very inexpensive (for medical diagnostic tests), at around $150-200.

4 ms·

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them! Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT sca

by CoastalCoder 3y ago

evantbyrne 3y ago
A person with 20 years of smoking history that waits for symptoms before getting tested might as well sign their own death certificate. CT scans aren't something that a person with a low risk profile would have routinely for a wide variety of reasons, which is why bringing an affordable liquid biopsy to market is so important. A lot of work has been done to make CT scans theoretically valuable to a wider audience, but that is not going to translate to widespread early cancer detection in-practice as evidenced by the >90% of eligible patients that never get tested.
briHass 3y ago
Yes. The one specifically designed for lung cancer screening is a 'low-dose' CT scan, that is usually around 1/5th of a standard CT scan. This is similar to the low-dose CT scan used for identifying heart disease, a coronary calcium scan. In fact, there some research showing that a single scan can do both at the same time (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4), quite well, especially coupled with ML analysis of the scans. For both of these diseases, it seems like the small amount of radiation (2-3x normal yearly background) is well worth the radiation risk done twice a decade for low risk (>40 y/o) and perhaps up to yearly for high-risk former/current heavy smokers (>50 y/o), which is the current recommendation. Even out-of-pocket, these scans tend to be very inexpensive (for medical diagnostic tests), at around $150-200.