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Whether a hospital should halt lung cancer screening during COVID-19 or any other pandemic depends on factors such as local infections and resource availability, debaters agreed at the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) virtual meeting.
With no evidence for what would happen to society and health system resources if screening were to continue, and no data on the risk to patients with undetected lung cancer if screening stopped entirely, the best one can do is to make something up, according to Frank Detterbeck, MD, of Yale University School of Medicine.
Arguments for Pausing
Detterbeck took the position that a given center should suspend its lung screening program, arguing that such screening exposes many more patients to potential infection from moving around or within a hospital than the small number of lung cancer deaths that would be averted because of screening.