The Benefits of Lung Cancer Screening

Lung cancer screening does reduce lung cancer related mortality in a high-risk patient cohort. The vast majority of the lesions that are found are false positives right this is just a small nodule you see a shadow on an x-ray or a nodule on a CAT scan they need to be followed up but most of them are not going to be lung cancer. It's really important to tell your patients in advance that there's a high false positive rate and that they know that they're committing to having a follow-up of that lesion. This can cause a significant amount of anxiety for a patient so you really want to do the counseling in advance.