PROJECT OVERVIEW:
- CLIENT: American College of Radiology
- PUBLICATION: Imaging 3.0
- PROJECT: Case Study
- INDUSTRY: Medical / Radiology
- FEATURING:
- Alexander A. Bankier, MD, PhD, medical director of LungHealth, the lung cancer screening program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital in Boston
- Lauren M. Taylor, RN, BSN, LungHealth program manager
- Mark D. Aronson, MD, vice chair for quality in the department of medicine at BIDMC and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School
- READ IT: A Proactive Role for Radiology
By the time lung cancer typically triggers symptoms, the five-year survival rate plummets to just 5 percent — giving it the highest mortality rate of any cancer and accounting for 25 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States.
Fortunately, advanced screening technologies can improve this prognosis through earlier detection of lung cancer. Radiologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital in Boston, launched a lung cancer screening program called LungHealth in 2016 to detect cancer as early as possible in patients whose smoking history puts them at high risk for developing cancer.
As part of the ACR Imaging 3.0 Initiative, this case study details how BIDMC enrolls high-risk patients into the lung cancer screening program to deliver coordinated care. According to Alexander A. Bankier, MD, PhD, LungHealth medical director, this program “shows how imaging can play a proactive role in disease prevention, not just detection.”
