Tanner Caverly works to improve personalized lung cancer screening decision making

A new study shows how to personalize the lung cancer screening decision for every patient. The results could help doctors fine-tune their advice to patients, so that it’s based not just on a patient’s individual lung cancer risk and the potential benefits and harms of screening, but also a likely range of patient attitudes about looking for problems and dealing with the consequences.

Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the study forms the backbone for new free online decision tools aimed at physicians and their teams, and at members of the public.

The tool for clinicians, called Lung Decision Precision, was designed by a University of Michigan and Veterans Affairs team to help clinicians talk with patients and their loved ones about whether to a lung CT scan might be a good idea for them.

The same team has also launched a website for patients and their loved ones, U.S. News & World Report: Should You Get Screened for Lung Cancer?, that gives easy-to-understand information about the positives and potential negatives of lung cancer screening, and allows individuals to calculate their personal risk of lung cancer.

Tanner Caverly, M.D., M.P.H., led the team that did the new computer-based simulation analysis using data from major studies of lung cancer screening, and national data on the potential screening population under the current guidelines.

Tanner Caverly was also recently interviewed for U.S. News & World Report on the risks and benefits of lung cancer screening. According to Dr. Caverly, it important to tailor the conversation about screening because the benefit-versus-risk calculation differs for each patient.