A model that incorporates demographic and smoking history data has identified regions populated with individuals eligible for lung cancer screening, according to study results presented at the CHEST annual meeting.
“Geospatial techniques allow us to look at population-level trends as part of identifying next steps in lung cancer screening outreach and resource planning,” Christine Lambert, MD, clinical instructor at University of Minnesota, told Healio. “These maps can potentially be used to see large numbers of current smokers for whom lung cancer screening should be offered alongside counseling on smoking cessation, or screening-eligible women for whom lung cancer screening could be discussed alongside mammograms as part of routine cancer surveillance.”
Lambert and colleagues used these geospatial techniques to estimate the number of individuals eligible for screening based on census tract. They created a model that incorporated current and former smoking prevalence data from the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance Survey along with demographic and census tract-level data on age, sex and race/ethnicity from the American Community Survey to identify individuals aged 50 to 80 years with a 20 pack-year smoking history and a quit time of less than 15 years, the criteria for lung cancer screening eligibility based on the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommendations.
“At the health system level, availability and ease of screening differ greatly across the country, with many rural patients needing to travel farther to access screening services,” Lambert said. “Prior screening eligibility requirements such as shared decision-making visits and continued requirements around pack-year eligibility can be harder for providers to navigate compared with other types of cancer screening. At the patient level, individuals may feel stigmatized for their smoking history and there is a lot of fear around getting a lung cancer diagnosis as it is known to be a high-mortality cancer.”
