Chest X-rays have not been shown to reduce the death rate from lung cancer, according to several previous studies. Because of their smaller enrollments, however, these earlier studies may have overlooked a small but important benefit of annual chest X-rays. One of the long-term goals of the PLCO trial is to determine whether chest X-rays can reduce lung cancer mortality in men and women 55 to 74 years of age.

Participants in the intervention group of this study -- those who received an initial (baseline) chest X-ray to screen for lung cancer -- are being tracked alongside participants in the control group -- a group of equal size that did not receive screening chest X-rays. Future analysis will reveal if the intervention group has a lower lung cancer mortality rate than the control group.


The current analysis confirmed that smoking vastly increases the risk for lung cancer. Of current smokers in the trial, 6.3 people per 1,000 screened were diagnosed with lung cancer. For former smokers (those who quit for less than 15 years), the lung cancer detection rate was 4.9 per 1,000. Among non-smokers, lung cancer was diagnosed in 0.4 individuals per 1,000 screened. Lung cancer rates were similar for men and women smokers, but, for unknown reasons, men had more positive X-rays (9.6 percent) than women (8.2 percent).

"The take-home message is to never start smoking, and if you do smoke, to quit," said Berg.

Another NCI-supported study, the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), is comparing two ways of detecting lung cancer: spiral computed tomography (CT) and standard chest X-ray. Both chest X-rays and spiral CT scans have been used to find lung cancer early. So far, neither chest X-rays nor spiral CT scans have been shown to reduce a person's chance of dying from lung cancer. This study will aim to show if either test is better at reducing deaths from this disease.

For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI Web site at www.cancer.gov.
or call NCI's Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4 CANCER (1-800-422-6237).

For more information on the PLCO, go to http://www3.cancer.gov/prevention/plco/index.html.

For more information on NLST, go to http://www.cancer.gov/nlst.

For more information on quitting smoking, go to http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/quitting-and-prevention.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.


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