doctors and patients discussing lung cancer screening. On average, the talks lasted less than a minute, the quality of the conversations was poor, and discussion about the potential harms of screening was “virtually nonexistent,” the investigators found.
“We’re not taking a side as to whether lung cancer screening is good or bad, but there seems to be a consensus that we should be sharing these complex decisions with patients,” said study senior author Dr. Daniel Reuland.
“Our fly-on-the-wall sample from real-world practice shows us that’s not happening,” he added. Reuland is director of the
Carolina Cancer Screening Initiative at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill.
“A lot of people [with positive screening results] undergo