{"entity":{"id":"nhs-targeted-lung-health-check","kind":"technology","name":"NHS Targeted Lung Health Check (lung cancer screening programme)","aka":[],"tldr":"England's lung screening programme: people aged 55 to 74 who have ever smoked are invited for a risk assessment and, if high risk, a low-dose CT scan, often in a mobile unit in a supermarket car park.","summary":"The Targeted Lung Health Check programme began in 2019 in areas with high lung cancer mortality, inviting ever-smokers aged 55 to 74 through their GP records for a telephone or face-to-face risk assessment using the PLCOm2012 and Liverpool Lung Project risk models; those above threshold have a low-dose CT scan, repeated at 24 months. In 2022 the UK National Screening Committee recommended targeted lung screening nationally and in June 2023 NHS England committed to full national rollout by 2029. Programme data reported that around three quarters of cancers were found at stage 1 or 2, reversing the usual stage distribution, and that uptake was highest where mobile scanners were used. Incidental findings, smoking-cessation support at the visit and radiology capacity are the practical constraints.","status":"standard-of-care","asOf":"2026-09-10","links":[{"label":"UK National Screening Committee recommendation on lung cancer screening","url":"https://view-health-screening-recommendations.service.gov.uk/lung-cancer/"},{"label":"Nature Medicine 2026: implementation of the NHS England Lung Cancer Screening Programme over 5 years (over two million invited, 7,193 cancers to March 2025)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04292-y"},{"label":"UK National Screening Committee: lung cancer screening recommendation (June 2022 review)","url":"https://view-health-screening-recommendations.service.gov.uk/lung-cancer/"},{"label":"GOV.UK: new lung cancer screening roll out to detect cancer sooner (26 June 2023)","url":"https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-lung-cancer-screening-roll-out-to-detect-cancer-sooner"},{"label":"Br J Cancer 2021: comparative performance of lung cancer risk models to define lung screening eligibility in the United Kingdom (273,789 people in three cohorts)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-021-01278-0"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["nsclc","sclc","lung-cancer"],"sections":["early-detection","imaging"],"technologies":["low-dose-ct-screening","ct","radiology-ai-screening"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["screening","stage-shift","targeted-lung-health-check","pack-year","pulmonary-nodule","lung-rads","smoking-cessation"],"trials":["nlst-nelson"],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["What the programme has found. By March 2025 the NHS England programme had invited over two million people and diagnosed 7,193 lung cancers, of which 63.1 percent were at TNM stage 1 and 12.6 percent at stage 2; the early-stage share of all lung cancer in England rose over the programme's first five years, and rose most in the most socioeconomically deprived regions (Nature Medicine 2026). The first phase, before the national programme, invited about 900,000 people, made 375,000 risk assessments, carried out 200,000 scans and found more than 2,000 cancers, 76 percent of them early stage against 29 percent outside the programme in 2019 (GOV.UK, 26 June 2023).","How eligibility is decided. Invitations are drawn from GP records for everyone aged 55 to 74 recorded as a current or former smoker; a risk model then decides who is scanned. England uses PLCOm2012 and the Liverpool Lung Project version 2, at a PLCOm2012 threshold of 1.51 percent risk over six years, rather than a pack-year cut-off. In UK cohorts PLCOm2012 classified 58.3 percent of future cases as screening eligible against 50.7 percent for the 2013 USPSTF criteria and 53.7 percent for LLPv2 (Br J Cancer 2021).","Where it is going. The programme costs £270 million a year at full size, is expected to deliver almost one million scans and find as many as 9,000 cancers a year, and is being rolled out area by area starting where lung cancer rates are highest, with full national coverage expected in 2030."],"principle":"Risk-model-selected invitation followed by low-dose CT with volumetric nodule management, delivered close to home to reach deprived communities.","strengths":["Stage shift towards curable disease","Reaches deprived populations through mobile units","Integrates smoking cessation"],"limitations":["Radiology and CT capacity","Incidental findings and false positives","Excludes never-smokers, who are a growing share of lung cancer"],"since":2019},"route":"/technologies/nhs-targeted-lung-health-check/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"lung-cancer","kind":"cancer","name":"Lung cancer (all types)","route":"/cancers/lung-cancer/"},{"id":"nsclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Non-small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/nsclc/"},{"id":"sclc","kind":"cancer","name":"Small-cell lung cancer","route":"/cancers/sclc/"}],"section":[{"id":"early-detection","kind":"section","name":"Early Detection & Screening","route":"/fronts/early-detection/"},{"id":"imaging","kind":"section","name":"Imaging","route":"/fronts/imaging/"}],"technology":[{"id":"radiology-ai-screening","kind":"technology","name":"AI in radiology","route":"/technologies/radiology-ai-screening/"},{"id":"ct","kind":"technology","name":"CT (computed tomography)","route":"/technologies/ct/"},{"id":"low-dose-ct-screening","kind":"technology","name":"Low-dose CT lung screening","route":"/technologies/low-dose-ct-screening/"}],"term":[{"id":"lung-rads","kind":"term","name":"Lung-RADS and nodule reporting","route":"/terms/lung-rads/"},{"id":"pack-year","kind":"term","name":"Pack-year","route":"/terms/pack-year/"},{"id":"pulmonary-nodule","kind":"term","name":"Pulmonary nodule","route":"/terms/pulmonary-nodule/"},{"id":"screening","kind":"term","name":"Screening","route":"/terms/screening/"},{"id":"stage-shift","kind":"term","name":"Stage shift","route":"/terms/stage-shift/"},{"id":"smoking-cessation","kind":"term","name":"Stopping smoking","route":"/terms/smoking-cessation/"},{"id":"targeted-lung-health-check","kind":"term","name":"Targeted lung health check","route":"/terms/targeted-lung-health-check/"}],"trial":[{"id":"nlst-nelson","kind":"trial","name":"NLST & NELSON (low-dose CT screening)","route":"/trials/nlst-nelson/"}],"collection":[{"id":"nhs-cancer-screening-programmes","kind":"collection","name":"NHS cancer screening programmes","route":"/collections/nhs-cancer-screening-programmes/"}]}}