30-Year Smoking Duration-Based Criteria Could Increase Lung Cancer Screening

FRIDAY, Dec. 19, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Thirty-year smoking duration-based criteria could reduce eligibility gaps for all races relative to Whites, while improving six-year lung cancer detection sensitivity, according to a study published online Dec. 16 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.Chloe C. Su, Ph.D., from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, and colleagues examined screening eligibility and prognostic performance of alternative smoking duration-based criteria versus U.S. Preventive Services Task Force screening eligibility in 2021 (USPSTF-2021) and risk-based screening using the recalibrated Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial 2012 (PLCOm2012update). Participants included 105,261 adults aged 45 to 75 years with a history of smoking.The researchers found that 24.0 percent of the cohort would be eligible for screening under USPSTF-2021, and the closest eligibility rate was yielded with a 30-year smoking duration (27.5 percent). The 30-year duration criteria would reduce eligibility gaps across all races relative to Whites compared with USPSTF-2021, most notably in African Americans (30.4 versus 28.8 percent under duration-based; 21.4 versus 30.2 percent under USPSTF-2021) and Latinos (25.1 versus 28.8 percent under duration-based; 15.7 versus 30.2 percent under USPSTF-2021). Under the 30-year duration criteria, prognostic sensitivity to identify lung cancer within six years increased across all races, although there was a decrease seen in specificity. A risk-based PLCOm2012update six-year threshold of 1.1 percent improved sensitivity and specificity in the overall cohort at matched overall eligibility (27.5 percent)."30-year smoking duration may be an alternative measure to the current USPSTF guideline criteria for lung cancer screening, reducing racial disparities in screening eligibility, particularly among African Americans and Latinos, while improving prognostic performance in sensitivity across all racial and ethnic groups," the authors write.Abstract/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required).Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter

30-Year Smoking Duration-Based Criteria Could Increase Lung Cancer Screening

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