“From 2012 until 2016, there were 7,686 cases of men with an age-standardised incidence rate of 13.2 per 100,000 of the population. In the same period, there were 3,570 cases with an ASR of 5.9 per 100,000 of the population in women,” he told Bernama at Sunway Medical Centre, Sunway City, recently.
“Air pollution and exposure to second-hand smoke are thought to create an inflammatory process mediated by chemical messengers called ‘interleukins’ that activate dormant driver mutations or pre-existing cancer-causing genes, like the epidermal growth factor receptor mutation in some vulnerable individuals.
In conjunction with World Lung Cancer Day which falls on Aug 1, Dr Anand, who is also the founding president of Lung Cancer Network Malaysia, said screening is essential to spot early-stage lung cancer, which can be successfully treated with curative surgery, sometimes with varying combinations of immunotherapy, targeted therapy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
“Also, AI is currently being explored to improve diagnostic accuracy and may be a useful triage tool. It is being deployed on simple chest X-rays as it is much cheaper, making it more accessible and many practitioners are using it as a pre-screening tool.”