A U.S. study finds that CT screening for lung cancer does not appear to cut down the death rate.
Some patients also have unnecessary surgery after the cancer, researchers told The New York Times. Earlier attempts to detect lung cancer early with chest X-rays had been disappointing.
"When we took this study on, we were expecting that CT might do the job where chest X-rays couldn't." said Dr. Peter B. Bach of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the lead author. Another recent study found that early detection increases survival time. But critics said that is meaningless because if a cancer cannot be effectively treated detecting it early only means a longer time between detection and death.
Bach said that the model of early detection increasing survival, true for many types of cancer, is not true for all.
The study is to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
