During Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Essentia Health Encourages Screenings

November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer of the lungs causes the most cancer-related deaths in America.

Essentia Health is encouraging people to consider lung cancer screenings. Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) uses special x-ray equipment to take-in-depth pictures of a patient’s lungs. With the computerized scans, no medicine is needed and no needles are involved.

Screenings help identify cancer early even if someone isn’t showing any signs of the disease.

“The screening is important because early lung cancers don’t have symptoms,” explained Dr. Greg Davis, a pulmonologist at Essentia Health-St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd. “So you can be walking around with lung cancer growing inside you and probably not know. When we screened people, we see a shift to Stage 1 and 2, and that’s curable disease.”

Dr. Davis also says that for roughly every 300 people who show up for lung cancer screenings, they end up saving a life.