Lung Cancer Screening Adherence Rates Decline Annually After Baseline Screening

THURSDAY, March 20, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Screening adherence is associated with increased overall and early-stage lung cancer detection rates among individuals undergoing lung cancer screening (LCS); however, adherence rates appear to decrease following baseline screening, according to a study published online March 18 in JAMA Network Open.

Roger Y. Kim, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study involving adults aged 55 to 75 years who formerly or currently smoked and underwent baseline LCS (T0) between Jan. 1, 2015, and Dec. 31, 2018, to examine annual LCS adherence rates across two subsequent LCS rounds (T1 and T2).

Overall, 10,170 individuals received baseline LCS. The researchers found that during rounds T1 and T2, 61.2 and 50.5 percent of eligible patients were adherent, respectively. There was a significant association for T1 adherence with T2 adherence. A total of 2.7 percent of participants were diagnosed with lung cancer across 36 months of follow-up. During rounds T0, T1, and T2, incident lung cancer diagnosis rates were 1.3, 0.7, and 0.8 percent, respectively. Higher lung cancer diagnosis rates were seen among those who were LCS-adherent during both rounds T1 (1.0 versus 0.2 percent) and T2 (1.3 versus 0.2 percent). The proportion of early-stage lung cancers was higher among individuals adherent to screening at T2 versus those not adherent (73.0 versus 25.0 percent).

“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,” the authors write.

Several authors disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.

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