Olympus Corp. of the Americas Highlighting Access to Screenings, Role of Patient Navigators during Lung Cancer Awareness Month

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., (November 4, 2024) - As we mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Olympus Corp. of the Americas (OCA) applauds the efforts of our non-profit partners like the American Lung Association, which work to raise awareness around the importance of lung cancer screenings and improving patient access.

While lung cancer mortality rates have been on the decline since 1990, lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer with an estimated 125,000 deaths projected this year.¹ Lung cancer is often caught in later stages when the cancer has spread outside the lungs to areas such as the lymph nodes. The five-year survival rate for late-stage non-small cell lung cancer is only about 37%. When caught at an early, localized stage, the five-year relative survival rate is 65%, a rate that highlights the importance of screening.²

Supporting the Proposed Lung Cancer Screening Bill

OCA supports the American Lung Association's efforts to raise awareness for the "Increasing Access to Lung Cancer Screening Act." The proposed bill, which includes bi-partisan sponsorship, would provide coverage for annual lung cancer screenings without the need for prior authorization. Screenings would be provided under Medicaid, Medicare and private health insurance to at-risk patients for whom screenings are recommended under U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines.

H.R.4286 also calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct outreach about lung cancer screenings and who should be screened and expands Medicaid coverage of tobacco cessation programs.

Increasing Patient Advocacy

During Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Olympus will host a physician webinar about helping patients navigate the process of getting diagnosed and staged once a lung nodule is detected. After a nodule is detected on a CT scan, patients can be overwhelmed by next steps for diagnosis, staging and treatment.

Studies looking at patient navigation programs found that the treatment process for many cancers has become more complex as treatment options continue to improve. Patient navigation can help improve access to and continuity of care, screening rates and cancer treatment completion rates and lend to quality-of-life improvements such as emotional well-being. Evidence suggests that patient navigation can shorten the time from screening to diagnosis to the start of treatment.³

Patient navigators have also been shown to help address barriers to cancer care such as language barriers and technological issues with telehealth appointments for older patients.⁴ An urban primary care group in Rhode Island implemented a bilingual patient navigator to assess patient and physician awareness of lung cancer screening guidelines. The navigator worked to address barriers to screening, and 28% of patients in that group eligible for lung cancer screening underwent a screening, compared to 13% statewide.⁵

Changing Guidelines to Qualify More Patients for Screening

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines recommend low-dose CT (LDCT) screenings beginning at age 50 for those with at least a 20-pack-year smoking history and who either currently smoke or have quit smoking within the past 15 years. A pack-year is determined by the number of packs of cigarettes smoked per day multiplied by the number of years the person smoked: 20 pack years equals a pack a day for 20 years.

Less than an estimated 5% of those considered high risk for lung cancer under current screening guidelines are undergoing annual screenings.⁶ Last year, the American Cancer Society (ACS) updated its screening guidelines to recommend that people get screened even if they stopped smoking for more than 15 years, a change the ACS estimated would qualify another 5 million people for regular lung cancer screenings.⁷

A recent study looking at the current recommendations for lung-cancer screenings found that another change in the guidelines could qualify more at-risk individuals for an LDCT scan screening.

The study looked at nearly 72,000 patients with a smoking history and replaced the 20-pack-year criteria with the criteria of smoking for 20 or more years. By considering smoking duration rather than pack years, 85% of Black patients and 82% of White patients with lung cancer would have qualified for screenings compared to 57% and 74%, respectively. The percentage of Black women with lung cancer who would have qualified for screening rose from 42% to nearly 64% when using smoking duration as the criteria.⁸

Researchers found that using smoking duration as a factor in screening eligibility helped close the racial gap for those eligible to be screened, in part, because it addressed a disparity in smoking intensity. Data showed that Black patients with lung cancer smoked significantly fewer cigarettes than White patients while smoking for roughly the same amount of years.⁸

"Routine screenings for at-risk patients are critical in detecting and diagnosing cancer as early as possible, when more treatment options are available and 5-year relative survival rates are highest," said Dr. John de Csepel, Chief Medical Officer, Olympus Corp. "Lung cancer screening rates are extremely low, so lowering barriers to screenings and expanding the guidelines to include more at-risk individuals could be an important step to improved patient outcomes. It's important that we begin talking about lung cancer screenings with the same regularity as other screenings such as colorectal and breast cancer."

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About Olympus
At Olympus, we are committed to Our Purpose of making people's lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling. As a global medical technology company, we partner with healthcare professionals to provide solutions and services for early detection, diagnosis and minimally invasive treatment, aiming to improve patient outcomes by elevating the standard of care in targeted disease states.

Olympus Corporation of the Americas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Olympus Corporation, is headquartered in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, USA, and employs more than 4,500 employees throughout locations in North and South America. For more information, visit olympusamerica.com.

^1. American Cancer Society, "Cancer Facts & Figures 2024"

^2. American Cancer Society, "Lung Cancer Survival Rates," rev. January 2024

^3. Chan, Raymond; Mitch, Vivienne; Crawford-Williams, Fiona, et al, "Patient navigation across the cancer care continuum: An overview of systematic reviews and emerging literature." CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, pub. June 2023, https://doi.org/10.3322/caac.21788

^4. Rodriguez, E; Olazagasti, C, et al, "Addressing Barriers to Lung Cancer Care for Diverse Populations through Patient Navigation: The University of Miami Experience." Journal of Thoracic Oncology, pub. Sept. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtho.2022.07.422

^5. Khan, Hina; Ramphal, Kristy, et al, "Disparities in lung cancer screening in a diverse urban population and the impact of a community-based navigational program." Journal of Clinical Oncology, pub. May 2023, https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.6555

^6. American Lung Association, "The 2022 State of Lung Cancer" report

^7. Wolf, Andrew M. D., et al, "Screening for lung cancer: 2023 guideline update from the American Cancer Society," CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, pub. Nov. 1, 2023

^8. Potter, Alexandra; Xu, Nuo; Senthil, Priyanka; et al, "Pack-Year Smoking History: An Inadequate and Biased Measure to Determine Lung Cancer Screening Eligibility." Journal of Clinical Oncology, pub. March 27, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.23.01780

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