National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Clinical Practice Guidelines for Lung Cancer Screening

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Key points

  • Patients age 55 or older, with a smoking history of 30 pack-years or more, are eligible for lung cancer screening.

  • Patients age 50 or older, with a smoking history of 20 pack-years or more, are eligible for lung cancer screening if they have an additional lung cancer risk factor (eg, asbestos exposure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary fibrosis).

  • Shared decision-making is important to make sure that patients are fully informed of benefits and risks of screening and that their

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) is a not-for-profit alliance of 25 of the world’s leading cancer centers that are devoted to patient care, research, and education. The NCCN was created in 1995 as a national alliance to develop and institute standards of care for the treatment of cancer and perform outcomes research. The goal of the 13 original member institutions was to ensure delivery of high-quality, cost-effective services to people with cancer across the country. NCCN has

National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines overview

The NCCN Guidelines provide evidence-based and consensus-driven management that guides clinicians caring for patients with cancer. NCCN Guidelines are developed and updated by 47 individual panels that include more than 950 clinicians and oncology researchers from the 25 NCCN member institutions. These guidelines apply to more than 97% of patients living with cancer in the United States. Each panel consists of multidisciplinary, disease-specific subspecialists who are recognized experts in

Development of new guidelines

Although the NCCN Guidelines have become comprehensive, covering virtually every aspect of cancer care, from time to time there is the identification of a new area of opportunity for guideline development. This is particularly true in the growing areas of cancer prevention, early cancer detection (screening), and end-of-life issues that relate to palliative and supportive care. The formal stepwise process of new guideline development is outlined in Box 5. The NCCN Guidelines Steering Committee

Development of National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for lung cancer screening

Until 2010, Guidelines regarding lung cancer screening were incorporated within the NCCN Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Panel (NSCL Panel) and included as a preface to the treatment guidelines for patients with NSCL. In fact, the 2010 guidelines from the NSCL Panel stated: “At the present time, the NCCN panel does not recommend the routine use of screening CT as standard clinical practice (category 3). Available data are conflicting and thus, conclusive data from ongoing clinical trials are

National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for lung cancer screening

The preface pages of the NCCN Guidelines list all of the individuals serving on the panel, their host institution, and their specialty. This page also includes a link to the conflict of interest disclosure for the panel members, followed by the table of contents that includes page links for navigating to relevant pages if one is using the electronic version of the guidelines from the Internet.

Update to National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for lung cancer screening V.1.2013

A major weakness of nearly all guidelines is the static nature of the recommendations in a field of constantly changing data and advances in practice. In rapidly changing areas of medicine, guidelines may even be outdated by the time they are published. A major strength of the NCCN Guidelines is the commitment to continual revisions and updates to keep the guidelines current, relevant, and meaningful to health care providers and their patients. NCCN Guidelines are updated at least annually

Update to National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for lung cancer screening V.1.2014

The second NCCN Guidelines Lung Cancer Screening revision was published in June 2013 with additional revisions in the Discussion published as a further update in April 2014. There were 2 substantive changes in this update of the guidelines. The first was a change in the size criteria to define a “positive” scan. The original guidelines had recommended further evaluation with shorter interval low-dose CT for lung nodules greater than 4 mm. New data had been published by Henschke and colleagues7

Update to National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for lung cancer screening V.1.2015

The third revision of the NCCN Guidelines Lung Cancer Screening was published in July 2014 with the most significant change being an upgrade of recommendations for screening in NCCN group 2 patients from a 2B recommendation to a 2A recommendation. Although this group of patients had remained one of the most controversial areas of NCCN Guidelines, the panel expressed uniform consensus of the appropriateness these patients being eligible for lung cancer screening. However, the panel also added

Summary

The NCCN represents 25 major cancer centers in the United States and has a wide breadth of experience in the development of cancer treatment guidelines. Through a rigorous and transparent process that includes multidisciplinary expert panels from all 25 institutions, NCCN produces guidelines in cancer prevention and early detection as well as cancer management that cover nearly all malignant conditions. In 2009, the NCCN created a new Lung Cancer Screening Panel that had the benefit of the

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References (8)

  • D.S. Ettinger et al.

    Non-small cell lung cancer

    J Natl Compr Canc Netw

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  • D.E. Wood et al.

    Lung cancer screening

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  • Referenced with permission from the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) for Lung Cancer...
  • M.T. Jaklistch et al.

    The American Association for Thoracic Surgery guidelines for lung cancer screening using low-dose computed tomography scans for lung cancer survivors and other high risk groups

    J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg

    (2012)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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