A new study suggests that using a 30-year smoking history as the main rule for lung cancer screening could help reduce racial gaps and catch more lung cancer cases early.
This change could benefit many people, especially African Americans and Latinos, who may be left out under the current guidelines.
The study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and led by Dr. Chloe C. Su from Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers looked at data from over 105,000 adults aged 45 to 75 who had smoked at some point in their lives.
They compared three ways to decide who should get lung cancer screening: the current U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guideline from 2021 (known as USPSTF-2021), a new 30-year smoking duration rule, and a risk-based method that predicts the chance of getting lung cancer within six years using a tool called PLCOm2012update.
According to the results, 24% of the people in the study would qualify for screening under the USPSTF-2021 rule. In comparison, the 30-year smoking rule would make 27.5% of people eligible—very close in number. But this new rule did something more important: it reduced the differences in who qualifies based on race.
For example, under the USPSTF-2021 rule, only 21.4% of African Americans were eligible for screening compared to 30.2% of white participants.
But with the 30-year smoking rule, the numbers became much more equal—30.4% of African Americans and 28.8% of whites would be eligible. The same improvement was seen for Latinos, where eligibility jumped from 15.7% under the current rule to 25.1% under the 30-year rule.
The researchers also found that this 30-year rule improved the ability to detect lung cancer within six years. In science terms, this means the “sensitivity” went up—it could find more real cases. However, “specificity” went down a bit, meaning there might be more false alarms. Even so, catching more cases early could lead to better outcomes for many people.
The study also tested the risk-based tool PLCOm2012update, which looks at a person’s overall risk of lung cancer based on many factors. When they set a six-year risk cutoff at 1.1%, the tool offered even better sensitivity and specificity, while still keeping the number of people eligible close to the same (27.5%).
The authors believe that the 30-year smoking rule could be a good alternative to the current national guideline. It not only makes screening more fair by reducing racial and ethnic differences in who gets tested but also finds more lung cancer cases early, when treatment is more likely to work.
This research highlights how updating screening rules can help save more lives and make healthcare more equal. As lung cancer continues to be one of the deadliest cancers, better screening strategies are crucial to help people from all backgrounds get the care they need.
If you care about lung health, please read studies that many smokers have undetected lung diseases and why vitamin K is very important for you lung health.
For more health information, please read studies about New diabetes drugs can benefit your kidney and lung health and the link between cough and lung cancer.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
