No. Quitting is really the only way to cut the risk of lung cancer, said Dr. Michael Thun, who heads epidemiology research for the American Cancer Society.
Smoking damages lung and the more years you smoke, the greater the damage. In general, it takes six “hits,” or bits of damage to DNA, to produce a lung cancer. With the first hit from a carcinogen, a lung cell begins to develop into a fast-growing patch of similar cells.
If a person quits after, say, three hits, pre-cancerous “sleeper cells are unlikely to become cancer,” said Thun. But if you resume smoking or never quit in the first place these “sleeper cells” acquire more hits and ultimately become full-blown cancers.
As for catching lung cancer early, there is still no recommended screening test because a large clinical trial called NLST (National Lung Screening Trial) is ongoing and won’t produce results for several years yet, said Dr. Phillip Boiselle, director of thoracic imaging at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
The NLST trial is designed to see which screening test, chest X-ray or spiral CT scan, is more effective at reducing deaths by catching lung cancer early. Chest X-rays subject a person to low levels of radiation, but can miss 30 percent of nodules that might be cancer. On the other hand, they are not too likely to yield false positives – results that suggest cancer when there is none.
Spiral CT scans, which can cost several hundred dollars and are often not covered by insurance, are better than chest X-rays at finding very small nodules, but they involve 15 times more radiation and are so sensitive they pick up many things that are not cancer yet but subject people to more tests and considerable anxiety.
If you’re worried about lung cancer, you can ask your doctor about getting a chest X-ray or spiral CT scan, but remember, at this point, the doctor’s advice will be based on an educated guess, not clear science.