Lung Cancer Risk Models Come of Age Available to Purchase

Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide, with more than 1.3 million incident cases per year and the highest mortality rates (1, 2). More than half of all cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when surgical resection is unlikely to be feasible. In clinically advanced tumor stages, long-term survival is rarely achieved with conventional cytotoxic agents (3). Therefore, the overall 5-year survival rate is a low 15%, but survival rates differ substantially by stage at presentation (4).

The 15% 5-year survival rate includes ∼70% for early stage Ia and 5% for locally advanced stage IIIb lung cancer, indicating that early diagnosis vastly improves outcome (5). The lung cancer community is awaiting the outcome of two large randomized controlled trials [i.e., the National Lung Screening Trial¹