Chest
Original ResearchCT Screening for Lung Cancer: The Value of Short-term CT Follow-up
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
We reviewed 1,968 consecutive baseline and 2,343 annual repeat screenings conducted from 1999 to 2002 after the completion of our initial experience.12 Minimum age for enrollment was 40 years (median age, 59 years) with a smoking history of at least 1 pack-year (median, 32 pack-years). The initial CT in all of these screenings and subsequent workup was also performed at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. All patients undergoing screening gave informed consent under institutional
Baseline Screening
Of the 41 patients who returned for follow-up CT within 2 months of the initial CT in baseline screening, 31 had nodules and 10 had patchy consolidation. Five patients (12%) had complete resolution, and seven patients (17%) had partial resolution (Table 2). Among the 10 patients with patchy consolidation, 8 patients (80%) completely or partially resolved after antibiotic therapy as compared to 4 patients (13%) of the 31 patients with nodules. Using either complete or partial resolution as the
Discussion
An important topic of research in CT screening for lung cancer is the development of strategies to either speed up or limit the evaluation of benign nodules. Early on, it was recognized that adult asymptomatic smokers without prior malignancy who had multiple nodules on the initial CT in the baseline cycle of screening probably had inflammatory parenchymal disease. Nodule consistency was also found to help distinguish benign from malignant nodules, since nonsolid and solid nodules were found to
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2015, European Journal of RadiologyCitation Excerpt :We chose 2 months as a minimal CT interval time instead of the currently recommended 3 months interval for a specific reason. Indeed, most of the studies in our cohort were done prior to the latest recommendations of 2013, and some of them were therefore spaced by only 2 months according to previous evidence [11,12]. On the basis of those criteria, 30 patients were included in the study, with a total of 31 nodules.
The lung reporting and data system (LU-RADS): A proposal for computed tomography screening
2014, Canadian Association of Radiologists JournalCitation Excerpt :A large (≥10 mm) nodule that suddenly appears between annual screening CTs must have a short volume-doubling time (<30 days) and, therefore, is more likely to be a transient nodule than an equivalent-size nodule seen on a baseline screening CT [37,38]. Data from screening research suggest that short-interval follow-up of new large nodules seen on annual screens can avoid biopsy or other workup [14,38]. This strategy for large nodules has also been evaluated on baseline scans in the Canadian arm of I-ELCAP.
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