Coronary artery calcification in lung cancer screening

Lung cancer screening has been shown in the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) to result in a statistically significant decrease in lung cancer specific mortality (1). In addition to the lung cancer specific mortality reduction, there was a statistically significant 7% reduction in all-cause mortality. As the entirety cannot be explained simply by lung cancer mortality reduction, it is conceivable that the detection of abnormalities incidentally detected during a screening CT might be playing a role