Bethany B. Tan, M.D., discusses the importance of Low Dose CT Scans for smokers or former smokers, age 55 and over, and how this early detection and resulting minimally invasive resections have helped decreased mortality by 20%.
I'm Dr Bethany Tandem, a general thoracic surgeon here. It's entirely new. Discoveries in the last 12 to 13 years has been the importance of doing screening LoDo screening CT scans for smokers. Our recent smokers doing these low dose screening CTS in the high risk population of those 55 older who have smoked in the last 10 years really does decrease mortality by 20%. That's been a big change, and we've seen that evolution is that data has come out of more and more people getting the screening. C T scan. Sentara has done a great job of doing outreach and and making the public aware of the availability. Um, of these screening CTS and the general population has also benefited from that popular from that education. It's not uncommon for me to see patients in the office who come in and have either had a low dose screening C t ordered by their primary care physician or I. I see patients every month who have asked toe have ah lo do screening C T scans and in fact, have found a early, uh, you know, low grade malignancy that we have been able thio cure with surgical resection. With all the new technologies that we have and new instrumentation and staplers that are available now, we can do the vast majority of these receptions now minimally invasively via vats or video assisted thoracic surgery. So we work through three little one inch incisions and do this all, um, with the camera and these these highly, um, specialized instruments. This really makes a difference for these patients who are undergoing lung resection or lumpectomies. They clearly leave the hospital 1 to 2 days earlier and have markedly decreased our narcotic needs. Um, post operatively and, um have returned toe to function and recovery easily two weeks faster than standard thoracotomy. So this has been a big, big benefit to our patients.
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