Lung cancer screening with low dose CT and radiation harm—from prediction models to cancer incidence data

Lung cancer is the first neoplastic killer worldwide (1). In 2011 the results of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) in US indicated a 20% lung cancer mortality reduction in subjects at high risk undergoing annual screening low dose computed tomography (LDCT) as compared to chest X-ray (2). A 11–30% reduction of lung cancer mortality was recently reported in three small randomized clinical trials (RCT) in Italy, Europe (3,4), propelling adoption of LDCT in subjects at risk of lung cancer.