Lung cancer screening in people who have never smoked: lessons from East Asia

H Gilbert Welch; Wayne Gao; Fatima G Wilder; So Yeon Kim; Gerard A Silvestri

doi:10.1136/bmj-2024-081674

Lung cancer screening in people who have never smoked: lessons from East Asia

BMJ. 2025 Feb 6:388:e081674. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2024-081674.

Authors

H Gilbert Welch¹, Wayne Gao², Fatima G Wilder³, So Yeon Kim⁴, Gerard A Silvestri⁵

Affiliations

¹ Center for Surgery and Public Health, Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA.
² College of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei City, Taiwan waynegao@tmu.edu.tw.
³ Division of Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, VA Boston Health Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA.
⁴ Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, South Korea.
⁵ Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

Abstract

Wayne Gao and colleagues argue that high detection rates and high survival rates in never smokers are less likely to be evidence of screening benefit and more likely to be evidence of its harm—overdiagnosis