As the war on cancer continues, a group of U.S. oncologists picked its “Top Five” most essential advances in cancer care, as reported by HealthDay news. I’m pleased to announce that CT-based lung cancer screening is listed as one of the major advances for 2011.

The report, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, placed only targeted drug therapy above CT-based lung cancer screening. Both advancements will be major game changers for cancer care. The report confirms that the U.S. National Cancer Institute found that screening smokers and former smokers with a CT chest scan was “dramatically better than the chest X-ray.”

There now is no question about this! In high risk heavy smoker populations, low dose CT- lung cancer screening saves lives… and quite a few. The challenge now is getting our healthcare delivery systems to incorporate this approach into routine preventative medical practices….but only for high risk individuals. We need to make these scans easy to obtain, fast to perform, very low in radiation, covered in health plans, and inexpensive.

The good news is that all of these things are possible. Turning CT-lung cancer screening into a regular practice for in-need individuals is very do-able!