New tool can spot those most at risk of developing lung cancer, say researchers

Lives could be saved by a new tool that identifies those most at risk of developing lung cancer, according to researchers.

The CanPredict tool can spot those most at risk of developing the disease over the next decade and put them forward for screening tests earlier, researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Nottingham said. They created and tested CanPredict using the anonymised health records of more than 19 million adults from across the UK and hope it can save “time, money and, most importantly, lives”.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide and the second most common form of the disease, but early diagnosis has been shown to improve survival rates.

Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, senior author and professor of clinical epidemiology and general practice at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, said: “We hope that this new validated risk tool will help better prioritise patients for screening and ultimately help spot lung cancer earlier when treatments are more likely to help. We’d like to thank the many thousands of GPs who have shared anonymised data for research without whom this would not have been possible.”

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Source: The Independent, 6 April 2023