Māori will be the focus of this country's first trial of screening for lung cancer.
Participants in the trial will be offered a CT scan. Photo: 123RF
It's been made possible by a grant of nearly $2 million from the Health Research Council and the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases programme.
Lung cancer is our biggest single cause of cancer death in New Zealand, and a major driver of health inequities between Māori and non-Māori.
Otago University Maori health researcher Sue Crengle will lead the trial.
She told Morning Report the trial was an exciting development as screening had powerfully positive outcomes.
"We're very excited. This is the first time a lung cancer screening has been trialled in New Zealand and we know that internationally, if you diagnose lung cancer earlier through screening then you can reduce the lung cancer mortality between 20 and 24 percent," she said.
People would be identified for the trial through their general practitioner and others would be invited through an essential hospital mechanism.
"We're doing it that way because in a survey we did of people who would be eligible for the lung-cancer screening, about a third of them said they'd like to be invited by their GP, a third of them said they'd like to be invited through an essential hub, and a third said they had no preference," she said. "So we are testing this out to see if one works better than the other."
"It will look at people who are assessed as being at high-risk of developing lung cancer" - Otago University Māori health researcher, Sue Crengle
The trial will look at a mix of Māori smokers and ex-smokers. "It will look at people who are assessed as being at high-risk of developing lung cancer. People at low risk don't need to have lung cancer screenings. We have ways to we can assess that," Crengle said.
"It is calculated on a number of things like how long people smoked for, how much they smoked and we calculate the risk of people developing lung cancer within the next six years."
After a risk assessment, if people are at high risk then they are given advice of cancer screening with a low-dose CT scan and of the benefits and risks of that. If they agree with the procedure the scan is carried out.