Lee Health using newer screening methods to find early lung cancer

Lung cancer remains the most lethal form of the disease. Its mortality rate tops breast, colon and prostate combined.

However, there is a silver lining—more people are getting diagnosed earlier, which greatly improves their chance of survival.

When it comes to the dreaded “C” word, lung cancer is historically one of the most catastrophic.

“Lung cancer is a silent disease. You don’t know that you have it until it may be stage three or four,” said Lee Health critical care pulmonologist Shyam Kapadia.

That’s why it’s so deadly. There are fewer good options to treat lung cancer when it’s caught at early stages. As a result, 135,000 Americans die from it each year. It frustrated Dr. Kapadia. He feels he could save more lives if they could detect the cancer and treat it in time.

“We have the technology now at Lee Health, including screening CAT scans and this robot that can get us to early stages of lung cancer so that you do have a fighting chance with resection or chemotherapy, and that’s really important,” he told WINK News health and medical reporter Amy Oshier. “Finding lung cancer at stage one is a game changer.”

Two things are moving the needle. Low-dose CT scans are now available for people ages 50 to 80 with a history of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for 20 years. Scans alert doctors to monitor potential trouble spots. If something is found, doctors at Lee Health can use the ION robot. It’s a bronchoscope that can thread deep into the far reaches of lung and take a biopsy.

“In the last two years, we’ve employed our robot-assisted bronchoscopy program, and we’ve doubled our growth in the first year. And so what that means is we’re finding early stages of lung cancer,” said Dr. Kapadia.

This year to date, Lee Health used the robot 532 times. That represents people who have a fighting chance against lung cancer.

This ION robot technology is a huge step forward in examining suspicious areas. In the past, getting a lung biopsy required invasive surgery.

ShorePoint Health in Charlotte County and both NCH and Physicians Regional Healthcare System in Collier County now have this technology, making it widely available across Southwest Florida.