This year in Minnesota an estimated 3,980 people will be diagnosed with lung cancer. 1,950 people will die from the disease.
“Lung cancer claims more lives of American women than breast, ovarian and uterine cancers combined,” says American Lung Association spokesperson Dr. Andrea McKee. She says getting screened can save your life.
“When we screen patients for lung cancer, about 80 to 85% of the time we find stage one or stage two disease,” explains Dr. McKee.
Stage one is nearly 90% treatable and curable.
“And that's not something people even think of when they when they think lung cancer, they think I'm going to die from this,” says McKee.
Last year the government expanded the number of people eligible for screening.
“These are individuals between the ages of 50 and 80,” explains McKee. “They have smoked tobacco, typically what we call a 20 pack year history of tobacco use. So that's like one pack per day times 20 years, or two packs per day times 10 years. You just basically calculate the two together. And they either currently smoke or quit within the past 15 years.”
McKee says there are a lot of people that could benefit from screening but are not taking advantage of it.
“There are 14 million people in the United States who need to be screened, and unfortunately across the entire U.S> only about 4% have actually been screened,” she says. And Minnesota is about 7%.”
McKee also says there is good treatment available for people with stage one lung cancer.
“We do a really good job during it with surgery,” McKee tells WCCO’s Susie Jones. “Even if patients can't have surgery, we can do what's called Stereotactic body radiation therapy, which is a non-surgical option for the treatment of stage one lung cancer that has excellent results.”
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