Lung, Cancer, Smoking.Your Questions Answered by Internal Specialist, Dr Mera

A friend of mine who used to smoke a pack of cigarettes for years have been just diagnosed with a lung cáncer, apparently the cancer is already spread into the liver and brain.

I know the best way to prevent this problem is to quit smoking, the sooner the better, But I wonder whether or not is it possible to make a real early diagnose in case the cancer has already developed.

Lung cancer is responsible for the greatest number of cancer-related deaths worldwide, primarily due to the lack of a test capable of detecting early stages of this disease. EarlyCDT-LungTM is a commercially-available blood test to aid in early detection of lung cancer for high-risk individuals.  Unfortunately, 80% of lung cancer cases are diagnosed in the latest stages of the disease.  Nowadays, the so-colled EarlyCDT Lung is a simple blood test to identify people with a heightened risk of lung cancer for triage into CT scanning.

A finger prick or blood draw can be collected in GP or hospital setting.

EarlyCDT Lung can detect lung cancer on average four years before standard of care [1] and has shown in a large NHS trial that it can reduce late stage lung cancer presentation by 36% [2].

https://www.jto.org/article/S1556-0864(17)32095-6/fulltext

https://www.jto.org/article/S1556-0864(16)32772-1/fulltext

If you have any questions, then email Dr Mera directly on 545152@gmail.com and wait for his answer in an upcoming edition.