There Are 94 Million current and former smokers in the U.S., and every year, 160,000 of them die of lung cancer. That's a hard fact, based on scores of medical studies. Now here's another: 14% of such deaths—some 22,000 lives—could be prevented, if only the patients would undergo CT screening for lung cancer. (The lesions on their lungs, once detected, would be small enough to treat.) Problem is, until now there hasn't been enough evidence to suggest that the benefits of CT screening outweigh the risks and to encourage the right people to get it. Now, thanks to a series of unprecedented large clinical trials, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)—a government-appointed panel of health experts—has issued a new and more definitive recommendation. Smokers ages 55 to 80 who smoked a pack a day for 30 years or more—even if they quit within the past 15 years—are most at risk of developing lung cancer. Every year, the USPSTF says, these smokers should get a low-dose CT scan to search for possible tumors.
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