National Lung Screening Trial
Caroline Chiles, MD, a professor of radiology in the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, discusses the results of The National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) and what they mean to patients.
Dr. Chiles served as the principal investigator for the Wake Forest Baptist site of NLST, a randomized national trial involving more than 53,000 current and former heavy smokers ages 55 to 74. Wake Forest Baptist enrolled 1,155 patients.
The trial compared the effects of 2 screening procedures for lung cancer—low-dose helical computed tomography (CT) and standard chest X-ray—on lung cancer mortality and found 20 percent fewer lung cancer deaths among trial participants screened with low-dose helical CT.
The NLST was sponsored by NCI, a part of the National Institutes of Health, and conducted by the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) and the Lung Screening Study group. Results were released by the NCI November 5, 2010.