Diagnostic screening programs help catch cancer, abnormalities or other diseases before they reach an advanced stage, saving lives and healthcare costs. Screening programs include, lung, breast, prostate, and cervical cancer, among many others.
CT calcium scoring provides valuable evaluations of intermediate-risk patients in addition to making good business sense for hospitals. Nauman Mushtaq, MD, an interventional cardiologist with Northwestern, shared his own experience with this technology.
"This awareness is important to avoid oversight of symptoms like dyspnea and vague chest discomfort, which can easily be interpreted as symptoms caused by the known disease COPD,” experts involved in the study said.
Of the 51 plans, just 31% were consistent with the USPSTF recommendations pertaining to the starting age and frequency of screening women who are at average risk of developing breast cancer.
Although current guidelines recommend radiologists evaluate CAC on all non-gated, non-contrast chest CT scans, the authors of the study note that these guidelines are not consistently followed.
The results of a survey completed by more than 13,000 respondents who were eligible for the cancer screening revealed that less than 2% of eligible participants underwent CTC exams.
Researchers reported that the artificial intelligence system was able to interpret more than 114,000 screening mammograms using a reading protocol with high sensitivity and specificity.
These findings underscore the need for better implementation of shared decision-making (SDM) models, as well as more thorough counseling documentation, as low-dose CT (LDCT) lung screen coverage is dependent on these factors, experts suggested.
Two advanced algorithms—one for CAC scores and another for segmenting cardiac chamber volumes—outperformed radiologists when assessing low-dose chest CT scans.
"Gen AI can help tackle repetitive tasks and provide insights into massive datasets, saving valuable time," Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said Tuesday.