WCLC 2022 | Highlights from WCLC 2022: CT screening

Well, the highlights, there’ve been lots of highlights actually. The CT screening workshop which ran on Friday was really good, very interactive, lots of really good questions and new concepts. The other highlight of course is being able to network with lots of very interesting people, share ideas, build new collaborations.

But I think for me, and I suppose I’m a bit biased in this, because I’ve been involved with this study, is the presidential presentation on the YESS study, the Yorkshire Enhanced smoking cessation study, which has shown a really significant finding. It’s shown that at 12 months, we had a sustained reduction in confirmed smoking cessation of around 30%, when the smoking cessation services were delivered at the same time as CT screening, on the same mobile truck.

Now, that’s quite important, because there’s a big argument about cost-effectiveness of screening. And one of the things that some people have raised who are very negative about screening is that screening may permit people to continue smoking. But actually we see the opposite. These people are quite motivated. They come along for their screen and they will stop smoking if they’re given really good smoking cessation services. So this is very important for cost-effectiveness.

We’ve never suggested that CT screening should be delivered without smoking cessation services. This is telling us we need to do it well, we need to co-locate it with the screening intervention. And that’s something that we’re pushing forward as a result of this study.