Study emphasizes need for lung cancer screening in patients with COPD
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Key takeaways:
- Researchers found that there was a significant overlap between patients with COPD and patients referred to lung cancer diagnostics.
- Patients with COPD had a higher prevalence of lung cancer than other patients.
Researchers noted a substantial overlap between patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and those referred to undergo lung cancer diagnostics, according to research presented at ESMO Congress.
“This subproject is part of a greater project collecting big data about patients under the suspicion of lung cancer and undergoing diagnostics — the diagnostic set up to see if they have lung cancer,” Lars Henrik Jensen, MD, PhD, with the department of oncology at Vejle Hospital, Vejle, Denmark, told Healio. “And in this specific project we are focusing on patients with COPD, [as] we know that they share the same risk factors for COPD as for lung cancer.”
Jensen and colleagues used the Danish LC Registry and the National Registry of COPD during a 10-year period. During that period, 25,647 patients were registered with COPD at outpatient clinics or during hospitalizations, of which 5,030 were subsequently referred to lung cancer diagnostics and 1,551 were then diagnosed with lung cancer.
The researchers noted that this corresponded to a 6% incidence of lung cancer among all COPD patients and 31% among those who were referred to lung cancer diagnostics.
Jensen and colleagues found that patients with COPD who were referred to lung cancer diagnostics had more COPD medications, performed worse in lung function, had higher rates of dyspnea and had higher rates of exacerbations compared with patients with COPD who were not referred to lung cancer diagnostics.
Additionally, they found that among all patients who had been referred to lung cancer diagnostics, patients with COPD had a higher prevalence of lung cancer compared with patients without COPD (31% vs. 29%, P < 0.05).
Jensen noted that in patients with COPD, “because it’s a high-risk group, you probably should include them in a screening program no matter their smoking [history]. That would be our clinical hypothesis based on these data.”
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Henricksen MB, et al. Abstract 1285P. Presented at: European Society for Medical Oncology Congress; Oct. 20-24, 2023; Madrid.
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