Awareness of Lung Cancer Screening Remains Low in US: Daily Dose

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Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

On November 18, 2024, we reported on a study published in JAMA Network Open that examined lung cancer screening communication in the US for people at high risk by smoking status and demographic, socioeconomic, and clinical characteristics.

The study

For the cross-sectional study, researchers tapped data for participants aged 50 to 80 years in the nationally representative 2022 Information National Trends Survey (HINTS)-6, conducted by the National Cancer Institute. Information was provided by self-report by 929 former smokers and 350 current smokers, representing a combined estimated population size of 40.9 million. Participants were asked if they had heard of lung cancer screening or had talked about it with a clinician at any point within the last year.

The findings

Among participants who formerly smoked, 18% had never heard of lung cancer screening and 75% never discussed lung cancer screening with their clinician. Among adults who currently smoke, the findings were similar, with 14% saying they had never heard of the test and 71% saying they had never spoken about it with a clinician.

Collectively, more than 80% of participants in both groups, regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, educational attainment, household income, urbanicity vs rurality, health insurance status, and unmet social determinants, had neither heard of lung cancer screening nor discussed screening with a clinician.

More than half (60%) of study participants who had a history of cancer or comorbid lung disease did not discuss lung cancer screening with their clinicians.

Authors' comment

"Our data emphasize the need for increasing [lung cancer screening] communication in the US, specifically, increasing education and outreach to eligible individuals who can benefit from [lung cancer screening]."

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