Current, Former Smokers Needed for UAB Study of Screening Tests

Don Helms thought he was home free when he quit a 40-year cigarette habit smoking six years ago and later chest x-rays were negative. So the Pleasant Grove man was shocked when a different type of test from UAB’s National Lung Screening Trial NLST showed a small suspicious mass in his lungs.

November 7, 2003

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Don Helms thought he was home free when he quit a 40-year cigarette habit smoking six years ago and later chest x-rays were negative. So the Pleasant Grove man was shocked when a different type of test from UAB’s National Lung Screening Trial NLST showed a small suspicious mass in his lungs.

“Thank goodness I joined this research study and my cancer was found early enough to be cured with surgery alone,” Helms said.

UAB is hoping to find many other happy stories as they enter the final weeks of recruiting volunteers for the NLST. The trial provides free screening of people who are at high risk of getting lung cancer by randomly assigning them to have annual tests by either spiral computed tomography (CT) or chest X-ray. “We need to find the best way to discover lung cancer before people have symptoms, and see if this can reduce deaths from this disease,” said Dr. Mona Fouad, who heads efforts at UAB’s site to recruit volunteers into the study.

Fouad is urging current and former smokers 55-74 years of age to call for more information on the NLST. Information is available at (205) 975-7221 or 1-866-760-5864. Participants must have never had lung cancer and not have had any cancer within the last five years (except some skin cancers or in situ cancers). They also cannot be enrolled in any other cancer screening or cancer prevention trial, and must not have had a CT scan of the chest or lungs within the last 18 months.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States for both men and women, said Fouad. “Lung cancer kills more people than cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, and pancreas combined, and about 157,200 Americans will die of lung cancer in 2003. The sooner we recruit additional participants for this trial, the sooner we will be able to determine which test, spiral CT or chest x-ray, is better at reducing a person’s chance of dying from the disease.”

Pleasant Grove’s Helms agrees: “My wife Gwen and I consider this to be a miracle from God by allowing this cancer to be found in its early stages.”

Chest X-rays detect tumors about 1 to 2 centimeter (cm) in size. Spiral CT, a technology introduced in the 1990s, produces a 3-dimensional image of the lung and can find nodules well under 1 cm in size. However, the majority of CT-detected nodules are benign, and there is no scientific evidence to date that the detection of small lung cancers with CT, or screening with either method, actually saves lives. The NLST is designed to help measure the effectiveness of these diagnostic tools.