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My Husband Was Just Diagnosed With Stage 2 COPD .

Posted on Wed, 20 Mar 2019

Question: My husband was just diagnosed with Stage 2 COPD. I would like him to get a lung cancer screening. His doctor said he should wait until he is 55. He is 53 now. He has been smoking a pack a day for 35 years. I am worried as his mom was diagnosed at 59 years old with stage 4 and it was to late. Being a young BC patient myself, being proactive is really important to me. They did see obviously his inflated lung and flattened diaphragm on the X-ray but said they did not see disease. I know xrays cannot pick up small mestastic disease all the time. Should we push for the screening now?

Answered by Dr. Dr. Jolanda (58 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
He can do a chest CT for screening

Detailed Answer:
Hello and welcome in HCM

I can understand your concern

According to his disease diagnosed recently and especially his family history of lung cancer if he was my patient yes I would recommend him to do a lung cancer screening.However first of all you should know that until now there is no specific test or blood tests that might completely and exactly exclude lung cancer in screening it.
Nevertheless in such situation in patients with COPD we recommend doing a chest CT especially in them with risks of having lung cancer (family history and COPD)

So please discuss with his doctor for the above and I am sure he/she will order it for him.Do not worry because not every COPD patient will encounter lung cancer in his lifetime according to several studies of the literature.

Hope to have been helpful

Regards

Dr.Jolanda

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Prasad