The US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have recommended the use of low dose CT lung cancer screening for high-risk individuals.
In addition, Medicare has granted insurance reimbursement for its beneficiaries who are eligible for the use of low dose CT lung cancer screening in high-risk patients.
GE Healthcare’ all new 64-slice and greater CT scanners, as well as all the 16-slice CT scanners are provided with screening option and are qualified systems for low dose lung cancer screening.
GE Healthcare molecular imaging and CT CEO and president Henry Hummel said: "Healthcare providers are looking for solutions beyond just imaging equipment; we look forward to helping them establish low dose CT lung cancer screening programs that will inevitably save lives through earlier diagnosis and treatment for patients."
Physicians deploying low dose CT for lung cancer screening will also provided with access to the benefits from a screening indication, including GE Healthcare’s new low-dose screening reference protocols.
The new protocols can use GE’s technologies such as ASiRTM, ASiR-VTM and VeoTM, which are designed to reduce image noise that is undesirable for physicians looking for small nodules.
The National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) was carried out at 33 medical institutions with around 53,000 older and healthy patients at high-risk due to smoking history.
In the trial, half of the patients have been screened using low dose CT and other half were screened using chest X-ray.
According to the firm, the study showed that the use of low dose CT screening decisively reduced the mortality rate from lung cancer by 20% compared against the use of chest X-ray.
Image: FDA has approved GE Healthcare’s low dose CT lung cancer screening. Photo: courtesy of General Electric.
