Millions of eligible patients skipping life-saving lung cancer screening
GILFORD, N.H. - Millions of people who are eligible to be screened for lung cancer aren't getting the test. A New Hampshire woman says she's living proof that it works.
Karen Kapelos loves to make classic Greek recipes for her family. "I love to cook and I'm a good cook," she told WBZ-TV. Lately she cherishes every moment in her kitchen after a terrifying health scare.
"It's like you black out. You just don't hear anything else after that - 'You have cancer,'" she said.
But Karen was lucky. She had surgery to remove the small tumor in her lung. It was caught in the earliest stage thanks to a routine screening recommended by her primary care physician.
"It gave me life," she said.
"It did save her life," said Karen's oncologist, Dr. Carey Thomson of Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.
Dr. Thomson estimates about 9 million Americans are eligible for lung cancer screening, but most aren't getting the simple CT scan.
"If we are screening the right number of people, we should be saving over 100,000 people a year," she told WBZ.
So why aren't people getting screened? Thomson says part of the problem is educating patients and doctors on who is eligible, which is a complicated formula of age and smoking history. The other problem is patient fear.
"There is that segment of the population who says that, they say 'I don't want to know so I don't want it,'" Dr. Thomson said.
But according to Thomson, finding a cancer this way is not a death sentence. The vast majority of tumors are found in the treatable early stages, and she says the test can also spot coronary artery disease and other small cancers on the thyroid, stomach or pancreas.
Massachusetts has one of the highest lung cancer screening rates in the country at 16%, but that's nowhere near enough according to Thomson.
"We still have a long way to go," she said.
Kapelos's advice?
"Choose to live and not die. Go and get screened," she said.
Dr. Thomson is currently working on a pilot program to sign women up for screening during their yearly mammogram.