Maxwell Oluwole Akanbi, MD, PhD, on Lung Cancer: The Effect of Screening on the Incidence of Advanced Disease
2022 ASCO Annual Meeting
Maxwell Oluwole Akanbi, MD, PhD, of McLaren Regional Medical Center, discusses the study he conducted, using the SEER database, to evaluate the impact of lung cancer screening recommendations on low-dose CT scanning. The data suggest that guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force led to a more rapid decline in the incidence of advanced disease in the United States, especially among minority populations (Abstract 10506).
Transcript
Disclaimer: This video transcript has not been proofread or edited and may contain errors.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality in the US, and this is because most patients with lung cancer are diagnosed at advanced stages of the disease. Trying to make patients present earlier has been an elusive challenge, until in 2011, when results of the National Lung Cancer Trial were reported. This study showed that low-dose CT scan could improve survival in patients with lung cancer by making earlier diagnosis. Although this has been shown in clinical trials, the government has ruled out lung cancer screening in the general population without also actually knowing whether it is efficacious in the general population.
Our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of lung cancer screening in the US general population. You will use the SEER database, we analyzed data of patient diagnosed with lung cancer from 2004 to 2018. Our goal was to see if the incidence of advanced lung cancer reduced over this time. Our results showed that incidence of advanced lung cancer actually decreased in the US population following the rollout of lung cancer screening. This was particularly significant in minority populations. This is encouraging because there have been concerns that lung cancer screening may not be very effective in this population because they had limited access to screening facilities.
So, while this is encouraging, the work is not yet done. Our end goal is to make sure there's reduction in lung cancer mortality. There are still barriers between screening and mortality, so the next stage of our study will be to see whether this reduction in incidence of advanced lung cancer actually translate to reduction in lung cancer mortality.
The ASCO Post Staff
Jenny S. Guadamuz, PhD, of Flatiron Health, discusses the use of telemedicine services in community oncology clinics for patients initiating treatments for 21 common cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Black, uninsured, non-urban, and less affluent patients were less likely to use telemedicine services. Although telemedicine may expand access to specialty care, the proliferation of these services may widen cancer care disparities if equitable access to these services is not ensured, according to Dr. Guadamuz (Abstract 6511).
The ASCO Post Staff
Benoit You, MD, PhD, of Lyon University hospital (HCL, France) and GINECO group (France), discusses findings from the GOG-0218 trial of patients with ovarian cancer, which appears to confirm earlier data on the link between poor tumor chemosensitivity and benefit from concurrent plus maintenance bevacizumab. In Dr. You’s validation study, patients who derived the most progression-free and overall survival benefit from bevacizumab were those with high-risk disease (stage IV or incompletely resected stage III) associated with an unfavorable KELIM score (CA-125 kinetic elimination rate constant, calculable online) (Abstract 5553).
The ASCO Post Staff
Etienne Brain, MD, PhD, of the Institut Curie, discusses phase III findings from the Unicancer ASTER 70s trial, in which patients aged 70 or older with estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer and a high genomic grade index received adjuvant endocrine therapy with or without chemotherapy. The data did not find a statistically significant overall survival benefit with this treatment after surgery (Abstract 500).
The ASCO Post Staff
Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Véronique Diéras, MD, of the Centre Eugène Marquis, discuss the many challenges posed by next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). They include side effects such as hematotoxicity, gastrointestinal toxicities, and interstitial lung disease; tumor targeting and payload release; drug resistance; and the urgent need to understand ADCs’ mechanisms of action to better sequence and combine drugs.
The ASCO Post Staff
Rainer Fietkau, MD, of Germany’s University Hospital Erlangen, discusses phase III findings of the CONKO-007 trial, which examined the role of sequential chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy administered to patients with nonresectable locally advanced pancreatic cancer following standard-of-care chemotherapy (Abstract 4008).
