# SUMMIT (lung health check study)

Source: https://onco.cc/trials/summit-lung/  
OnCo record `summit-lung` (Trial). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

The biggest single UK lung screening cohort, run across diverse and deprived London boroughs, which showed the same early-stage shift and also showed that the poorest were the least likely to come.

## Summary

SUMMIT screened 2,333,488 primary care records across 251 practices, found 95,297 people eligible for invitation and recruited 12,773 into the lung health check arm. Of these, 261 (2.0 percent) were diagnosed with lung cancer, 207 of them (79.3 percent) at stage 1 or 2. Surgery was the primary treatment for 201 people; 28 of 241 resections (11.6 percent) turned out to be benign, and one person (0.4 percent) died within 90 days of surgery. At 12 months, episode sensitivity was 97.0 percent and specificity 95.2 percent, giving a false-positive rate of 4.8 percent.

The uptake paper is the uncomfortable one. Of 29,545 who responded to an invitation, response was significantly higher in the least deprived areas than the most (odds ratio 1.89) and higher in former than current smokers (also 1.89). A programme aimed at the people most at risk keeps reaching the people least at risk first, which is the problem that IMPALA and INSIGHT are now trying to solve.

## Fields

- Kind: Trial
- Status: positive
- Last checked: 2026-09-25
- Also known as: SUMMIT study; NCT03934866
- Tags: uk; screening; lung
- Registry id: NCT03934866
- Phase: observational
- Setting: A lung health check with low-dose CT offered to high-risk people aged 55 to 77 across 329 primary care practices in north east and north central London, one of the most ethnically diverse populations in Europe
- Sponsor: University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, funded by GRAIL
- Enrolled: 12773
- Result: 261 lung cancers in 12,773 participants, 79.3 percent at stage 1 or 2; episode sensitivity 97.0 percent and false-positive rate 4.8 percent; uptake 1.89 times higher in the least deprived areas than the most.

## Sources

- Lancet Oncology 2025: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/40154514
- Lancet Public Health 2023 (uptake): https://europepmc.org/article/MED/36709053
- NIHR Be Part of Research: https://bepartofresearch.nihr.ac.uk/results/search-results?query=SUMMIT%20lung%20health%20check

## Connected records

- cancers: [Lung cancer (all types)](https://onco.cc/cancers/lung-cancer/), [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- fronts: [Early Detection & Screening](https://onco.cc/fronts/early-detection/)
- technologies: [Low-dose CT lung screening](https://onco.cc/technologies/low-dose-ct-screening/)
- institutions: [University College London Hospitals / UCL Cancer Institute](https://onco.cc/institutions/uclh/)
- trials: [UKLS](https://onco.cc/trials/ukls/), [YLST](https://onco.cc/trials/ylst/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/summit-lung.json