In a cost-of-care-study Canadian researchers found that focusing on high-risk people could reduce the number of people who need to be screened by more than 80 percent, and calculated the cost of screening to be $20,724 (in 2015 Canadian dollars) per year of life saved; this means
the screening would be considered cost-effective compared to the benchmark of $100,000 that is often paid for other cancer interventions in national healthcare.
Combining CT screening with smoking cessation and management of cardiac care and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease would ultimately improve the cost-effectiveness of lung cancer screening, the researchers added. Their study appears in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.
Lung cancer screening using computed tomography or CT scans are effective in identifying lung cancer, but the high cost of the procedure has made such screening controversial.
The team looked at patient-level data from two major screening trials: the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) and the Pan-Canadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer Study (PanCan). They built an economic model to simulate the costs and benefits of introducing lung cancer screening programs for high-risk people -- those who had a 2 percent or higher chance of developing lung cancer within six years.
Lead author Dr. Sonya Cressman, of The Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control, and The British Columbia Cancer Agency in Canada, said in a press release: "We need to think about how we manage lung cancer and focus on more economically viable strategies, including prevention and screening. Screening those at a high risk gives us the chance to prevent and treat a range of tobacco-related illnesses, and could also offer access to care for individuals who could be otherwise stigmatized or segregated from receiving treatment."
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