Taipei City Government

Dr. Xu Liang-Hao, attending physician at the Department of Occupational Medicine, Zhongxiao branch of Taipei City Hospital, said that most lung cancer patients do not have symptoms, or merely have mild symptoms. So by the time they seek treatment after symptoms occur, they are often found to be at the terminal stage of cancer, which is too late for treatment, with less than 15% having a five-year survival rate. However, if patients with early-stage lung cancer can be diagnosed and treated, the five-year survival rate can reach 70%.
Now, the latest multi-detector “64-slice CT scanner”, which uses low-dose lung screening, it is not only completely non-invasive, but also able to detect 0.2 cm of nidus. In addition, emphysema and bronchiectasis, which are common among smokers, can also be diagnosed. It increases lung cancer detection rate as well as facilitates future tracking.
Dr. Xu points out that high-risk groups for lung cancer normally include: smokers who smoke more than 1 pack of cigarettes per day for 20 years; people with family members who have lung cancer; and people with long period of exposure to organic chemicals such as asbestos, petroleum, asphalt, coal tar, chrome, nickel, beryllium, arsenic, vinyl chloride, nitrite, aniline dyes, radiation and uranium. Lung cancer may even occur among people who spend long periods of time in the kitchen, though in such cases, the patients are normally those who do the cooking. Hence, people in the high-risk lung cancer group are recommended to receive a low-dose CT scan of the lungs as soon as possible for early detection of lung cancer.