Hello, my name is Paulo Ferreira Machuze, I'm a fourth year medical student in Brazil and I'll be presenting on behalf of my professor and his colleagues the poster entitled Check Lung Protocol, CT Lung Cancer Screening is Useful to Adjuvant Comorbid Disease Diagnosis. First and foremost, I would like to thank the WCLC Scientific Committee for the opportunity to present in such a renowned space and to all listeners of this presentation. I do not have any financial relationships to disclose. Lung cancer screening via chest CT scans can save lives by identifying early stage tumors. On the other hand, because cigarette smoking affects multiple systems, most participants die of comorbid smoking-related diseases, which may be unknown to the patient. However, these diseases are treatable with an expectation of reduced mortality and improvement of quality of life. Lung cancer screening scans provide information about smoking-related conditions that are not currently systematically assessed. We developed one simple free software CT scan assessment protocol that evaluates the presence of six comorbid diseases during lung cancer screening. This study is a retrospective examination for the presence of six comorbidities of 774 low-dose CT scans from patients who underwent lung cancer screening between 2016 and 2020. Patients included met the criteria for lung cancer screening. The comorbidities searched for on scans were coronary artery calcification, sarcopenia, interstitial lung disease, emphysema, osteoporosis, and hepatic steatosis. Past medical records were reviewed to describe if these comorbidities were previously non-diagnosed. The clinic characteristics of each participant were identified as the mean of density volumetric blood values with T-test and p-square. About scans, CT data were acquired in full expiration and evaluated by two different radiologists. To validate the radiology interpretation, they gave a coefficient that was calculated to analyze the agreement indexed in coronary artery calcification and the intra-class correlation coefficient to access the correlation of the reliability of measures for liver, spleen, and lung density. Our sample had a mean age of 64, and 602 were male patients, which represents 77.7%. We found that 671 of CT scans for lung cancer screening had at least one or more comorbidities. In the field of non-pulmonary diseases, we found that coronary artery calcification was identified in 41.9% of CT scans, sarcopenia was found in 9.9%, osteoporosis was present in 44.2%, and hepatic steatosis in 40.7% of the cases. Among lung disease evaluated, emphysema was observed in 66.3% of scans, and interstitial lung disease in 32.2%. New diagnoses of cardiovascular disease were made in 25% of patients, emphysema in 7%, and osteoporosis in 46%. We observed a strong significant relation between sarcopenia, coronary artery calcification, and mortality. Our data demonstrated a high prevalence of previously undiagnosed cardiovascular disease in emphysema, interstitial lung disease, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and hepatic steatosis in CT scans from lung cancer screening patients. Check lung protocol can potentially facilitate diagnosis of these additional pathologies and provide an opportunity for treatment or prevention of progression for high morbid mortality conditions. Data from this study can increase the value of screening with minimal impact on lung cancer screening programs. As take-home messages, we would like to highlight that through the check lung protocol, we can improve the identification of smoking-related diseases, and that this protocol represents a simple, unique, and free screening tool with no financial impact for lung cancer screening. I would like to thank all listeners for your time, as well as for the opportunity that my professor, Dr. Bruno Hodghager, provided me. Thank you very much.

Check Lung Protocol

comorbid diseases

lung cancer screening

low-dose CT scans

diagnosis