[4] Currently multiple professional organizations, as well as the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the European Commission's science advisors[5] concur and endorse low-dose, computerized tomographic screening for individuals at high-risk of lung cancer.

The definition of who is considered to be at sufficiently high risk to benefit from lung cancer screening varies according to different guidelines.

[6] The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) suggests screening for two high risk groups.

[10] The currently used low dose CT scan results in a radiation exposure of about 2 millisieverts (equal to roughly 20 two-view chest x-rays).

[14][15][16] In the Mayo Clinic study, termed "The Mayo Lung Project," researchers randomized over 9,000 male smokers age 45 and older to receive either chest x-ray and sputum screening three times a year, or annual chest x-ray screening.

Since none demonstrated reduced lung cancer incidence or mortality between randomized groups, chest x-ray was determined to be an ineffective screening tool.

In 1996, results were published of a study of 1369 subjects screened in Japan that revealed that 73% of lung cancers that were missed by chest x-ray were detectable by CT scan.

[19] Among the earliest United States-based clinical trials was the Early Lung Cancer Action Project (ELCAP), which published its results in 1999.

[21][18] In 2006, results of CT screening on over 31,000 high-risk patients – an expansion study of the Early Lung Cancer Action Project – was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In contrast, a March 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found no mortality benefit from CT-based lung cancer screening.

Screening should be discontinued once a person has not smoked for 15 years or develops a health problem that substantially limits life expectancy or the ability or willingness to have curative lung surgery".

[40] In 2022, the European Union proposed to update its guidelines on cancer screening to take into account new evidence that had emerged since 2016.

A comprehensive evidence review by the European Commission's Scientific Advice Mechanism recommended lung cancer screening for current and former smokers, combined with smoking cessation programmes.

[5] This article incorporates public domain material from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.