The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's lung cancer screening criteria may exclude people who could benefit from the screening, according to a study published Aug. 20 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Researchers from Boston University, along with other U.S. institutions, collected data from the 1997-2014 National Health Interview Survey and the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to create and compare alternative lung cancer screening criteria with the task force criteria.
Effectiveness of the criteria was measured in the number of "high-benefit" people included in a criterion's selection. For the study, high benefit was defined as gaining at least 16.2 days of life on average from three annual screenings.
The alternative criteria showed an overall 13% higher degree of sensitivity (91% compared to 78%) for selecting individuals, with a 2% higher sensitivity for selecting high-benefit individuals. The alternative criteria also showed an increased sensitivity among racial and ethnic minority groups, according to the study.