LUNG CANCER EARLY DETECTION, TREATMENT SAVES LIVES
Johnnie Mitchell quit smoking after she was diagnosed in 2012 with both throat and kidney cancer, but her years of tobacco use came into question in 2020.
“I was having some pain, and it got so that I would cough and cough all the time,” said Mitchell, 67, who lives in Itta Bena. Because of the pandemic, she opted to forego an in-person trip to the University of Mississippi Medical Center to see a provider. Instead, she had a June telehealth visit with Jonathan Hontzas, a nurse practitioner and director of the Medical Center’s lung cancer early detection program.
Hontzas suggested Mitchell undergo lung cancer screening to better diagnose her illness. It revealed a lung nodule, and a biopsy showed it was cancerous – but caught very early.
“At first I said, ‘Here we go again,’” said Mitchell, who also beat stomach cancer in 2003. “But Jonathan said, ‘We got this. We got this in time.’”
She had surgery that August and today is cancer-free. But if the nodule hadn’t been discovered early, it might be a different story.
The sooner someone who has high risk is screened, the better their chances of survival. “Lung cancer is pretty notorious for showing up in the later stages,” Hontzas said. “If you have a primary (cancer) mass, the volume can double every three months.”
As the lung cancer early detection program approaches its 1,000th screen over a 12-month period, UMMC experts are reminding patients that screening is easy and can save lives.
The Medical Center performs lung cancer screening using a low-dose CT scan, exposing patients to a minimum amount of radiation. Studies show there’s about a 20 percent mortality reduction for patients screened via a yearly low-dose CT scan versus a simple X-ray, Hontzas said.
“Lung cancer kills more people every year than any other cancer,” said Dr. Michal Senitko, assistant professor of medicine and surgery and section chief of interventional pulmonology. “The challenge has always been in early detection. Before low-dose CT scan, we didn’t have a good tool to truly find the cancer very early.”
If Mitchell “hadn’t had the scan, or if she had not gotten a scan for another reason, we might have found it when it was in a much more advanced stage,” said Senitko, who co-directs the early detection program with Hontzas.
“We joke that the most common way to find lung cancer is a fall from a deer stand. That’s when people get imaging on their chest, and other things are found.”
Lung cancer in Mississippi can be socioeconomic, with many cases coming from rural and low-income residents. “We have a higher percentage of smokers compared to other states,” Hontzas said. “We tend to see patients in the later stages of cancer because of problems with access to care, and because our patient population has a lower health insurance rate.”
Although patients can simply call and make an appointment to be screened, most are referred by their primary care provider because past or current smoking or family history put them at higher risk.
And, there’s good news for Medicare patients needing the screening. Medicare previously covered the expense for patients ages 55-77 with a history of at least 30 “pack years,” or one pack of cigarettes per day for 30 years. That’s been revised to cover ages 50-77, with a minimum 20 pack years, or one pack of cigarettes per day for 20 years, or one-half a pack a day for 40 years.
“We have a quick clinic visit with them to make sure they qualify for the scan and understand the risks and benefits, and we provide counseling on smoking cessation,” Hontzas said. “After that, you just walk down the hall and receive your scan, which only takes seconds. There’s no pain, no needles involved, and no drinking anything.”