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. 2018 Apr 5;13(4):e0195441.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195441. eCollection 2018.

Identifying high-risk individuals for lung cancer screening: Going beyond NLST criteria

Marcela Fu  1 , Noémie Travier  2 , Juan Carlos Martín-Sánchez  3 , Jose M Martínez-Sánchez  1   3 , Carmen Vidal  2 , Montse Garcia  2 ; LUCAPREV research group
Affiliations

Identifying high-risk individuals for lung cancer screening: Going beyond NLST criteria

Marcela Fu et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: There are two main types of strategies to identify target population for lung cancer screening: 1) strategies based on age and cumulative smoking criteria, 2) risk prediction models allowing the calculation of an individual risk. The objective of this study was to compare different strategies to identify the proportion of the Spanish population at high risk of developing lung cancer, susceptible to be included in a lung cancer screening programme.

Methods: Cross-sectional study. We used the data of the Spanish National Interview Health Survey (ENSE) of 2011-2012 (21,006 individuals) to estimate the proportion of participants at high risk of developing lung cancer. This estimation was performed using the U.S. national lung screening trial (NLST) criteria and a 6-year prediction model (PLCOm2012), both independently and in combination.

Results: The prevalence of individuals at high risk of developing lung cancer according to the NLST criteria was 4.9% (7.9% for men, 2.4% for women). Among the 1,034 subjects who met the NLST criteria, 533 (427 men and 106 women) had a 6-year lung cancer risk ≥2.0%. The combination of these two selection strategies showed that 2.5% of the Spanish population had a high risk of developing lung cancer. However, this selection process did not take into account different groups of subjects <75 years old having an individual risk of lung cancer ≥2%, such as heavy smokers <55 years old who were long-time former smokers, and ever-smokers having smoked <30 pack-years with other risk factors.

Conclusions: Further research is needed to determine which selection strategy achieves a higher benefit/harm ratio and to assess other prevention strategies for individuals with elevated risk for lung cancer but who do not meet the screening eligibility criteria.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Distribution of ENSE participants with a 6-year lung cancer risk ≥2% who did not meet the NLST criteria.
* One individual was a former smoker for more than 15 years and used to smoke <30 pack-years. Thus, the total sums up 101, not 100.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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