caPoDS Laboratory
Personalized Lung Cancer Screening (PLuS) Study
Contact PI/ Project Leader: Dr. Dejana Braithwaite
Project Overview
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the US and worldwide, largely because most patients have advanced, incurable disease at the time of diagnosis. Lung cancer screening (LCS) with computed tomography (CT) has the potential to revolutionize lung cancer outcomes through early detection. However, LCS is not without risks, such as false positive results and post-surgical complications. Therefore, it is critical to determine which patients stand to benefit from LCS and those for whom the risks outweigh the potential advantages. The Personalized Lung Cancer Screening (PLuS) study addresses this need by studying the benefit-to-risk ratio of LCS in a diverse, real-world patient population.
The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) — the study that established LCS guidelines — was conducted in a low-risk population of patients that were relatively young, healthy, and demographically homogenous. It is unclear whether higher-risk patients in real-world settings will experience the same ratio of benefits to harms of LCS given differing risks of mortality and complications. We established the PLuS cohort, comprising 31,795 participants in California, Florida, and South Carolina that underwent LCS between 2016 and 2021. Using electronic health record and claims data from this diverse, representative cohort, we are gaining insights into the characteristics that predict if a patient will benefit from LCS — insights that will directly inform clinical LCS guidelines worldwide.
Contact PI/ Project Leader:
- Dr. Dejana Braithwaite
Co-PIs:
- Dr. Michael K. Gould
- Dr. Gerard A. Silvestri