Identifying high-risk individuals for lung cancer screening: Going beyond NLST criteria

Background: There are two main types of strategies to identify target population for lung cancer screening: 1) strategies based on age and cumulative smoking criteria, 2) risk prediction models allowing the calculation of an individual risk. The objective of this study was to compare different strategies to identify the proportion of the Spanish population at high risk of developing lung cancer, susceptible to be included in a lung cancer screening programme. Methods: Cross-sectional study. We used the data of the Spanish National Interview Health Survey (ENSE) of 2011–2012 (21,006 individuals) to estimate the proportion of participants at high risk of developing lung cancer. This estimation was performed using the U.S. national lung screening trial (NLST) criteria and a 6-year prediction model (PLCOm2012), both independently and in combination. Results: The prevalence of individuals at high risk of developing lung cancer according to the NLST criteria was 4.9% (7.9% for men, 2.4% for women). Among the 1,034 subjects who met the NLST criteria, 533 (427 men and 106 women) had a 6-year lung cancer risk ≥2.0%. The combination of these two selection strategies showed that 2.5% of the Spanish population had a high risk of developing lung cancer. However, this selection process did not take into account different groups of subjects