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A federally appointed task force recommended a major increase in the number of Americans eligible for free screening for lung cancer, saying expanded testing will save lives and especially benefit Black people and women. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group of 16 physicians and scientists who evaluate preventive tests and medications, said people with a long history of smoking should begin getting annual low-dose CT scans at age 50, five years earlier than the group recommended in 2013. The group also broadened the definition of people it considers at high risk for the disease. (McGinley, 3/9)

The advice, published on Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA, differs in two major ways from the task force’s previous guidelines, issued in 2013: It lowers the age when screening should start, to 50 from 55, and it reduces the smoking history to 20 years, from 30. (Grady, 3/9)

The inclusive criteria are expected to increase eligibility from 6.4 million adults to 14.5 million, according to an editorial by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine professors published in JAMA Tuesday. “There’s a huge need to diagnosing patients early,” said Dr. David Carbone, an oncologist and lung cancer specialist at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, who is unaffiliated with the editorial. “When you don’t do screening exams, most lung cancer patients are diagnosed when they're incurable.” (Rodriguez, 3/9)

Lung cancer is the nation’s top cancer killer, causing more than 135,000 deaths each year. Smoking is the chief cause and quitting the best protection. Usually, lung cancer is diagnosed too late for a good chance at survival. But some Americans who are at especially high risk get an annual low-dose CT scan, a type of X-ray, to improve those odds. (Neergaard, 3/9)