That there are strong associations between smoking and emphysema and smoking and lung cancer is well established. Therefore, it’s of little surprise that a report from Lung Cancer finds emphysema that is visible to radiologists from CT scans is correlated with an increased risk of lung cancer.

However, these results were only discovered when the emphysema was read by radiologists— and not by computer interpretation. Researchers point out that radiologists and automated computer software likely detect different types of emphysema- with only doctors appearing to detect the type of emphysema associated with lung cancer. This clearly highlights the “intuition” factor in scan interpretation by experienced radiologists—a factor not yet evident in intelligent computers!

Patients that are found to have emphysema detected by CT scans are already at an increased risk of developing lung cancer and should quit smoking as soon as possible. It is interesting to remember that before cigarette smoking became widespread, both lung cancer and emphysema were exceedingly rare diseases. Those high risk patients should explore the benefits of lung cancer screening and lung cancer screening programs.

For more information on the benefits of lung cancer screening, please see here.