2023-11-17 15:10:26
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the world. And one of the reasons for this high mortality is its late diagnosis. It is estimated that about 80% of patients are diagnosed with the disease in advanced stages, and this makes its treatment difficult. Fortunately, this whole ‘horror movie’ has a solution: early diagnosis through screening. The Lung Ambition Alliance España (LAA) recently published the document «Lung cancer in Spain: A public health priority?» Prepared with the collaboration of 21 experts belonging to the 10 Scientific Societies and Patient Associations involved, it defines in 5 broad lines a series of recommendations and proposals for improvement, based on the current situation in Spain, to ensure that access to an innovative medicine that accompanies strategies to detect lung cancer early and combat its high mortality, improving survival figures.
On the occasion of World Lung Cancer Day, the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) has announced the start of the CASSANDRA project. The project CASSANDRA (Cancer Screening, Smoking Cessation and Respiratory Assessment) is active in 12 hospitals, to which 40 Spanish centers will be added in the coming months. This pilot project aims to demonstrate the viability, feasibility and cost-effectiveness of lung cancer screening programs in our country.
Lung cancer is responsible for 20% of all cancer deaths in Spain, with almost 23,000 deaths annually. Every year 29,000 cases of this disease are diagnosed in our country, a figure that will continue to grow in the coming years. Of all of them, 70% of these are detected in advanced stages, making a curative resection impossible in most of them. This fact means that the average survival 5 years after diagnosis does not exceed 15%. However, survival rises to 80% in those patients in whom cancer is diagnosed early. Hence the need to implement early detection initiatives such as the CASSANDRA project.
The group of scientific societies that collaborate with SEPAR in the CASSANDRA project considers that the best way to improve survival in patients with lung cancer lies in the combination of primary prevention, through smoking cessation, and secondary prevention, with screening programs. using low-dose radiation Computed Tomography (CT).
This initiative is based on the experience accumulated in both Europe and the United States with notable contributions from Spanish centers and is inspired by the recommendations of the advisory council of scientific experts of the European Union (Science Advice for Policy by European Academies – SAPEA) and the commission itself that recommend the progressive implementation of lung cancer screening in the EU.
The CASSANDRA project has the participation of more than 40 hospitals and primary care centers in 16 autonomous communities.
«Lung cancer screening is like the holy grail», says Dr. Luis Seijo, Director of Pulmonology at the University of Navarra Clinic (Madrid) and Coordinator of the SEPAR Thoracic Oncology Area.
»At the Clinic we were the first to establish a lung cancer screening program by performing a low-dose radiation chest CT scan and we have more than 20 years of experience in the early diagnosis of this disease. That is why we have gotten involved in this project to make lung cancer screening a reality and move to the public sphere,” says Seijo, coordinator of the CASSANDRA Project.
If we are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of euros to treat lung cancer, we must be willing to pay tens of thousands to prevent it.
Juan Carlos Trujillo
Co-director of the CASSANDRA Project
Seijo highlights that «The pilot project represents a unique opportunity to implement patient-centered screening capable of increasing survival in lung cancer.detect other key diseases such as COPD and cardiovascular pathologies, and get participants who continue to smoke to quit tobacco consumption.
Juan Carlos Trujillo, co-director of the CASSANDRA Project, highlights that “if we are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of euros to treat lung cancer, we must be willing to pay tens of thousands to prevent it.” For his part, Àngel Gayete, radiologist, secretary of the CASSANDRA Project, assures that “low-dose CT has been shown to save lives by early detecting lung cancer and other diseases linked to smoking.”
The CASSANDRA project incorporates Low-dose radiation computed tomography as a screening tool, in combination with tobacco cessation, spirometry, and collaboration with primary care. The objective is to provide evidence on the feasibility of lung cancer screening in our country, thus helping it to be implemented in the future in the National Health System, in line with the recommendations of the European Plan to Fight Cancer.
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