MORGANTOWN — Residents in the 42 West Virginia counties without access to lung screening capabilities will soon have the opportunity thanks to LUCAS.
LUCAS, an acronym for lung cancer screening, is the nation’s first and only fully mobile CT unit for low-dose lung cancer screening. The unit is carried in a tractor trailer and fully powered by a generator, allowing it to provide screenings in any parking lot in the state, Dr. Hannah Hazard-Jenkins, Director of the WVU Cancer Institute said.
“There’s a lot of pride, pride in those that put this together, pride in our understanding of the needs of the state of West Virginia,” Hazard-Jenkins said. “We understand that geographically, it’s a little bit challenging, there are also some socio-economic challenges. And one of our responsibilities, I believe, at the Cancer Institute is to think a little bit differently and how we deliver care.”
LUCAS builds on the success of Bonnie’s Bus, which has provided more than 23,000 mammograms and discovered more than 110 cases of breast cancer since 2009, according to WVU Medicine. Hazard-Jenkins said there have been a lot of lessons learned with Bonnie’s Bus that can be applied to LUCAS.
Trying to figure out how to serve the state’s rural areas is something of a theme at WVU Medicine, Albert Wright, president and CEO of WVU Health System said.
“We’re always trying to figure out, how can we screen in the remote or the rural parts of the state?” Wright said. “So, we’ll rotate. We’ll go where there’s demand, right? We got 20 slots a day. It’s kind of like, kind of like a concert tour. If you fill out Madison Square Garden once, you do a second show. You fill up 20 slots in, you know, Preston County, you do more there. But we’ll hit all 42 counties that don’t have this capability, weather permitting at times, because this is if you notice a big rig behind us.”
Usually by the time Dr. Kyle Chapman, lead pulmonologist of the lung cancer screening program, diagnoses lung cancer, patients have symptoms such as coughing up blood, night sweats and weight loss — signs the disease is more advanced with less options to cure the disease.
“The whole benefit of lung cancer screening is finding it early before it causes trouble at a point where you could have treatment with curative intent,” Chapman said.
He encouraged any adult over 50 with a significant history of smoking to talk to their doctor about a screening — which on LUCAS is as easy as changing into a gown and lying there for a few minutes while the machine does its work.
Hazard-Jenkins said she hopes once LUCAS will serve as a role model for mobile health programs and once proven successful she hopes other rural areas follow.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
