November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and it’s also the same month Covenant Health rolled out a new lung-screening program.
Dr. Greg Poe is a radiologist for Covenant Health Partners. He explained Covenant now uses CT scans to help screen for lung cancer.
“In the past, we’ve always just used mammograms and some other types of devices to screen patients,” Dr. Poe said. “At this point we’re screening with CT, so it’s important to have low dose and what it does for the patients is now we catch these cancers before they’re symptomatic, before the patients have any problems. That’s when you want to treat them.”
Dina Smith is a lung nurse navigator at the Joe Arrington Cancer Center. She said this program could help with when cancer is detected.
“We’re trying to catch lung cancer early, rather than when they’ve already had it for quite a while, and their prognosis is going to be very poor,” Smith said.
“We’ve never done screening for lung cancer before this time. It’s always been if you’re symptomatic, we’ll get you an X-ray, we’ll get you a CT,” Dr. Poe said. “This is an asymptomatic population we’re talking about. “
“If you are a smoker, you’re at an increased risk for cancer. We’re now going to start screening you. You don’t have any problems yet, so hopefully we can start catching these cancers earlier, and we can get you treatment. In the past, lung cancer, your survivability is very poor because we catch it late. If we catch them early, then we have a much better chance of treating a patient successfully,” Dr. Poe said.
Smith and Poe said it’s more than just a CT scan: It’s a program.
“It’s a complete program, so we also do counseling with this. If you’re in the screening program, you’re going to have some counseling about smoking cessation, we’re going to do a lot of education as far as what the CT scan looks like and what kind of dose you’re going to get,” Dr. Poe said.
This screening is for people who are between the ages of 55 and 77 years old, who are long-term smokers.
“Those that are high risk, those can be those who have a smoking history, those who have quit but still have quit within 15 years,” Smith said.
