Annual Screening May Be Adequate for Follow-up of Non-Solid Lung Nodules

Researchers have shown that an annual low-dose Computed-Tomography (CT) scan may be sufficient for follow-up for non-solid lung nodules.

Current follow-up procedures for Non-Solid Nodules (NSN) include biopsies or surgery. NSN are mostly asymptomatic lung growths and are only rarely life-threatening. The nodules are being found more frequently in the US because of recent national guidelines that recommend annual lung-cancer screening exams for longtime smokers.

The study was published on July 5, 2016, in the online issue of the journal Radiology. The researchers used data from the large-scale International Early Lung Cancer Program (I-ELCAP) and tried to validate findings from an earlier study with data from the US National Lung Screening Trial (NLST). The NLST trial compared lung cancer detection using chest X-Rays and low-dose CT.

The study included 26,722 participants. Only 48 of the participants died of lung cancer, while one or more NSNs were found in 9.4% or 2,534 of the participants. The findings could help prevent unnecessary biopsies and surgery for patients with NSNs.

Co-author of the study, Claudia I. Henschke, MD, PhD, Department of Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital (ISMMS; New York, NK, USA), said, “When you biopsy a nonsolid nodule, it’s usually pre-malignant, noninvasive, or due to some other cause like infection or fibrosis. We think that we have enough data now to say that these nodules can safely be followed by annual CT scans and do not have to be biopsied or treated right away. Survival remains 100 percent as long as the nodules remain nonsolid, and for those that ultimately do progress, the one-year follow-up interval is short enough that they still remain entirely curable.”

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Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital