Thank you for visiting the Lung Cancer CT Screening Web Page:
Are you concerned about your personal risk of lung cancer?
Are you thinking about whether you want to have CT screening?
In this web page, I will focus on helping you to find out your personal risk of getting lung cancer and explaining the benefits and risks of computerized tomographic (CT) screening.
The web site will describe why CT screening is safe and effective in detection of lung cancer, how CT scans can detect lung cancers at a small size, when it is still in an early stage and has a high chance of cure, using minimally invasive surgical methods, and in most cases, without the need for chemotherapy.
If you are interested in lung cancer screening, Medicare and Medicaid require that you review a “decision aid” before having a “shared decision making” conference with your doctor. I have provided a decision aid that meets Medicare requirements on the following page.
Lung Cancer CT Screening: A Decision Aid
After you have reviewed this summary information, if you want more information, use the link to return here and read further pages for more detailed information on your personal risk of lung cancer and the benefits and risks of CT screening.
Otherwise, proceed to the next page.
Are you concerned about your lung cancer risk?
About the author:
You need to be careful when seeking medical information on the Internet. There are a lot of sites that provide inaccurate advice.
How is Frederic W. Grannis Jr. M.D. qualified to offer you advice on whether you are at risk for lung cancer and whether CT screening will offer you benefit?
I am a retired, board certified general and thoracic surgeon, who spent more than 40 years in, first a clinical practice in Arcadia, California and later an academic practice as Clinical Professor of Surgery at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, CA.
My perspective is that of a practicing doctor, focusing on the care of the individual patient rather than on global economic or public health considerations.
I served as a member of the Lung Cancer Guideline Committee of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) for ten years, as a member of the board of University of California’s Tobacco Related Disease Research Projects (TRDRP) for three years, and as an investigator with the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (IELCAP) for the past twenty years. ,
During these years I provided care for many thousands of people with lung cancer and other diseases caused by tobacco products, including other cancers, coronary, carotid and peripheral vascular disease and chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) and emphysema.
Although treatment of lung cancer with surgery, sometimes in combination with radiation therapy and chemotherapy, is rewarding, it is inescapably true that a far better alternative is to prevent these diseases or, at the very least, to detect them when they are still in an early stage, by screening, where they can be treated more effectively and safely, using more easily-tolerated and less expensive treatments.