2022 World Conference on Lung Cancer (ePosters)-EP01.04-006. Clinical Scores, Biomarkers and It Tools in Lung Cancer Screening - Can an Integrated Approach Overcome Current Challenges?

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The document discusses the challenges and potential solutions in lung cancer screening. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths, with a large percentage of patients being diagnosed at advanced stages. Recent studies have shown that annual low-dose chest CT (LDCT) screening can reduce lung cancer mortality. However, there are still challenges in selecting the right individuals for screening, personalizing screening intervals, managing indeterminate lung nodules, and detecting incidental findings.<br /><br />Current screening programs use age and smoking habits as eligibility criteria, but these criteria may miss many lung cancer cases. To improve selection, more precise baseline risk models are needed, which could include factors like gender, ethnicity, comorbidities, occupational factors, environmental factors, and specific biomarkers. Additionally, screening intervals could be individualized based on baseline risk and other factors.<br /><br />For indeterminate lung nodules, the combination of nodule volume and imaging biomarkers can help in determining whether a biopsy or further follow-up is needed. Risk stratification and screening personalization based on clinical scores or combinations of clinical and biomarker scores can improve the effectiveness of screening programs and reduce the number of unnecessary CT scans, radiation exposure, and costs.<br /><br />Furthermore, lung cancer screening programs offer an opportunity to detect other undiagnosed diseases such as COPD, aortic aneurysms, and coronary artery disease. IT tools can enhance the reading of LDCT scans and aid in detecting these incidental findings with high sensitivity and specificity.<br /><br />The document emphasizes the importance of integrating clinical scores, biomarkers, and IT tools into LDCT-based lung cancer screening programs. Large-scale clinical studies are needed to further validate and develop models that can enhance existing and future screening programs.<br /><br />The methods and objectives of the document include a non-systematic literature search to identify recent key manuscripts, snowballing, and complementary literature search. The findings are summarized in three sections: pre-CT, at-CT, and post-CT, focusing on the relevance of clinical scores, IT tools, and biomarkers at each stage. The document concludes by stating that further research and model development are needed to improve lung cancer screening programs.

Asset Subtitle

Wieland Voigt

Meta Tag

Speaker Wieland Voigt

Topic Early Detection and Screening - Implementation Quality Control

Keywords

lung cancer screening

challenges

solutions

low-dose chest CT

screening intervals

indeterminate lung nodules

baseline risk models

biomarkers

IT tools

clinical studies