[1] It was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and conducted by the American College of Radiology Imaging Network and the Lung Screening Study Group.
[3] Current United States Preventive Services Task Force recommendations as of 2021[update] are "annual screening for lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) in adults aged 50 to 80 years who have a 20 pack-year smoking history and currently smoke or have quit within the past 15 years" (Grade B).
When their initial findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers reported that low-dose CT scanning was associated with a 20% decrease in deaths from lung cancer,[5][6] and that this effect was visible in both current smokers and former smokers.
[7] More recent research based on this trial, published in JAMA Internal Medicine,[8] has found that low-dose computed tomography detects many false positives—in the study, 18% of total detections were considered to be an overdiagnosis, i.e. the cancer would never have threatened the life of the patient.
[10][11] This study, too, raised concern in the media over potential conflicts of interest related to the tobacco company, although this time on the contra-CT scan side: on October 8, 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that at least two lead investigators of the study had conflicts of interest arising from their serving as paid, expert defense witnesses for the tobacco industry – one of them had given testimony asserting that promoting CT screening was "reckless or irresponsible", and another had provided an expert report warning that CT screening "may do more harm than good.