CT lung screening

Lung Screening with CT

A special program using low radiation dosage is used in CT lung screening making it a safe method for screening.
As opposed to regular x-rays, the CT scan is a great help not only in the discovery of tumorous diseases but also in the diagnosis of various other lung diseases.
Who should have a CT scan?
• anyone over 40 years
• those who smoke
• passive smokers
• those living or working in air polluted conditions

What happens during the examination?

The examination takes place in the CT examination room of the Radiological Department. You will be asked to lie on your back on the examination table. A series of images will then be prepared (without contrast material). Most of the examinations take 20-30 minutes.
In the event that abnormalities are found, a new series of images may be necessary with contrast material. Since this requires information regarding the Patient’s kidney function, new appointment will have to be made.
This second examination will be free of charge. The Patients pay only for the contrast material.

Why is lung screening important?

While screening was introduced during the early-mid 20th Century, for combating tuberculosis with great effectiveness, lungs screening today serves the purpose of screening for lung tumors. Of all the tumorous diseases, lung cancer claims the most victims in Hungary and worldwide in both men and women, equally. The high death rate can be connected to not only to the serious environmental conditions, smoking and smog, but, also to the lack of screening and early diagnosis. Yet, of all the cancers, lung cancer is the one that is most easily prevented.

Eighty-five to eighty-seven percent of lung cancers cases are due to active and 3-5% of cases are due to passive smoking. The more a person smokes, the greater the risk of lung cancer. It has been shown that, smoking one box of cigarettes per day increases the risk of lung cancer ten-fold in men and five-fold in women. Lung cancer has become one of the most important health issues in research as well as prevention.

 A chest x-ray results in so-called summation images wherein the images are exposed one on top of another providing even thus much information.

The CT scan, on the other hand, consists of a series of thin image slices taken in a plane perpendicular to the patient’s longitudinal axis, keeping the images distinct and separate and allowing for the minutest details to be examined. The modern, new generation CT equipment is capable of even greater resolution with low radiation dosage. With this equipment, detailed images may be obtained of the entire chest (lungs, heart, ribs, etc.) during one breath and, by storing the digital images, the lungs, heart and the rib cage may be examined at a later date with the help of various reconstruction and 3D software.

The regular x-ray, in itself, already increases the number of lung cancers diagnosed but the Multidetector Computed Tomography (MDCT) allows the diagnosis of abnormalities of but a few millimeters especially behind the heart, or lung areas near the diaphragm, or other areas of the lung difficult to ascertain.