Cancer screening is available for a limited range of cancers. Bowel cancer screening now starts at age 45 as a response to the rise in early onset cancers. Women can opt in to breast screening from the age of 40, and cervical cancer screening with new technologies alongside HPV immunisation for boys and girls could eliminate the disease in Australia.
And now, since July, lung cancer screening has been introduced specifically for current and past heavy smokers. Lung cancer is deadly largely because it is almost always diagnosed when it’s too late for surgery, which can be curative when done early. The idea behind lung cancer screening using CT scanning is to find tumours before it’s too late and before they’re causing symptoms. 65% of lung cancers found this way can be successfully treated.
The people eligible for the free lung cancer programme (which your GP can refer you to) are aged between 50 and 70 who are either current or past smokers (in the last ten years) with no lung symptoms and a smoking history of a pack a day for 30 years. Anyone with symptoms such as a cough, breathlessness or blood in their sputum needs to be sent for diagnostic testing which is more intensive than screening.
