Tampa's Moffitt Center is part of a nationwide search for an accurate lung cancer screening method.
By LISA GREENE
Published September 10, 2003
TAMPA - Researchers who study the deadliest kind of cancer dream of a day when there will be a routine test for it.
Their hope: a scan that turns up early lung cancers, just as a mammogram can for breast cancer or a colonoscopy does for colon cancer.
That's why Tampa researchers are looking for smokers and former smokers willing to participate in the largest lung screening trial ever launched.
The trial, begun last year by the National Cancer Institute, will include 50,000 current or former heavy smokers. They will be screened with either a chest X-ray or a newer technique, a spiral CT scan, to look for possible lung cancers.
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute is one of about 30 sites participating across the country. Moffitt has signed up 500 to 600 patients and is looking for at least 400 to 500 more, said Dr. Robert Clark, Moffitt's chief of radiology.
Lung cancer kills more than 155,000 Americans each year, far more than any other cancer type.
But most lung cancers are diagnosed too late, Clark said. Patients come in when they're coughing up blood or having chest pains. Often, the cancer has spread beyond the lungs.
Most of them die: The five-year survival rate for lung cancer is about 15 percent, reports the National Cancer Institute.
Chest X-rays can find tumors when they are 1 to 2 centimeters in size. Studies in the 1970s showed that didn't help survival rates, Clark said, which is why X-rays aren't used as a routine screening tool.
Spiral CT scans, developed in the 1990s, can detect tumors when they are less than a centimeter in size. The scanner rotates around the patient, taking X-rays that show a 3-D picture of the lungs.
Generally, smaller tumors are more curable and less likely to have spread, but no studies have shown whether the spiral CT scan helps save lives.
There could be risks if people are routinely screened for lung cancer. Smokers often have lung abnormalities, so screenings might mean they face more frequent lung biopsies even though they don't have cancer.
In the study, patients will be randomly assigned for either chest X-rays or a spiral CT scan once a year for three years. They will be followed until 2009.
To participate, people must be between ages 55 and 74, have never had lung cancer or any major cancer within five years, and now smoke, or used to smoke, at least a pack a day. For more information, call Moffitt: (813) 903-4941 or, toll-free, 1-800-226-5966.
The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville also is signing up 1,000 patients for the same study. To contact them, call (904) 953-2200.
