John Abisheganaden, Clinical Director at National Healthcare Group, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“BREAKING: The future of lung cancer screening in Singapore just got clearer.
Did you know? In Singapore, a significant number of lung cancer patients have never smoked a cigarette in their lives. Yet, our screening criteria have traditionally focused almost exclusively on smokers.
Today, I’m thrilled to share our latest publication in JAMA Network Open, where we dove deep into the data to ask a critical question: Should we expand low-dose CT (LDCT) screening to include never-smokers in Singapore?
Here’s what we uncovered:
- The Current Gap: Relying solely on smoking history is missing a huge portion of our local population. We’re seeing alarmingly high late-stage diagnoses in non-smokers – and we can do better.
- The ‘Sweet Spot’: Our Markov model shows that targeting ever-smokers remains the most cost-effective strategy right now. But here’s the game-changer – broad biennial screening for all adults may actually be economically viable under our healthcare benchmarks.
- The Road Forward: Instead of a blind universal rollout, we recommend using risk-prediction models to pinpoint high-risk never-smokers. This allows us to maximize life-saving potential while staying efficient.
The bottom line? Let’s standardize smoker screening today – and build the tools to integrate non-smokers tomorrow.
Clive Tan, Jansen Koh, Haresh Singaraju, Ravindran Kanesvaran, Gideon Ooi, Srujana Ganti, Daniel SW Tan, Adrian Kee, Charlene Liew, Lynette Teo, Priyanka Rajendram, Dennis Bingzhu Chia and many more brilliant minds.
Let’s change the narrative on lung cancer in Asia. Early detection saves lives – regardless of smoking status.
Link to the full paper below.”
Title: Cost-Effectiveness of Universal Low-Dose Computed Tomographic Lung Cancer Screening in Singapore
Authors: Ruijie Li, John Abisheganaden
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