How is lung cancer diagnosed? | Norton Cancer Institute

Описание: John T. Hamm, M.D., Medical Director of the Norton Cancer Institute Research Program, answers the question, how is lung cancer diagnosed?

The next step is either a chest x-ray or a CT scan of the chest. Chest X-rays are very simple, meaning, it's usually done in the office. You stand up and two pictures are done and that's that.

It's not that sensitive for lung cancer though. What's usually done now is a CT scan and CT scans are X-rays usually done in a hospital or outpatient facility and you go in and lay on a table and the table kind of moves you in and out of this x-ray machine while they take these cuts. It's very quick, it takes about 30 seconds nowadays.

So, there are some people we know that are at higher-than-normal risk for developing lung cancer, people that have smoked twenty years or more, a pack a day or more. They have a high risk of developing lung cancer and we know that if we do, what are called annual CT scans, are these X-rays at the chest once a year then we find more lung cancers, we find them earlier and more people are cured of their lung cancer than if we simply wait for symptoms to develop.

Often when the symptoms develop that signs that it's spread already. The prognosis is best for early stage lung cancer; it’s potentially curable. Late-stage lung cancer is not generally curable.


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