Lung Cancer Screening Adherence Decreases Across Subsequent Testing

“In this multicenter cohort study of adults who received baseline LCS between 2015 and 2018 across 5 US health care systems, adherence to annual LCS decreased with each round of screening, and adherence during round T1 was associated with subsequent round T2 adherence. Annual LCS adherence was significantly associated with increased lung cancer detection during each round of screening and a greater ratio of early- to late-stage disease by round T2,” lead study author Roger Y. Kim, MD, MSCE, from the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care in the Department of Medicine at Perelman School of Medicine of University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, wrote with coauthors. “The finding that annual LCS adherence rates decreased across subsequent rounds of screening supports the use of annual adherence as a quality metric for LCS programs seeking to maximize the benefits of LCS for early lung cancer detection and, ultimately, reduced lung cancer-related deaths.”