Targeted lung health check

The Targeted Lung Health Check programme began in England in 2019 and has become the national Lung Cancer Screening Programme, with full coverage expected in 2030. Invitations are drawn from GP records: everyone aged 55 to 74 recorded as a current or former smoker is invited to a check by phone, online or in person, covering breathing, lifestyle, family and medical history, with height and weight measured. A risk prediction model then decides who is scanned. England uses PLCOm2012 and the Liverpool Lung Project version 2 (Br J Cancer 2021), with a PLCOm2012 threshold of 1.51 percent risk of lung cancer over six years. Those above threshold are offered a low-dose CT scan, repeated every two years; results follow within four weeks; anyone who still smokes is offered stop-smoking support at the same appointment, which the UK National Screening Committee made a condition of its recommendation. About 70 percent of the first phase's scanning was done in mobile units sited in places such as supermarket car parks, deliberately in the most deprived areas, where people are four times more likely to smoke. The first phase invited about 900,000 people, made 375,000 risk assessments, did 200,000 scans and found more than 2,000 cancers, 76 percent of them early stage against 29 percent outside the programme in 2019. By March 2025 the programme had invited over two million people and diagnosed 7,193 lung cancers, 63.1 percent at stage 1 and 12.6 percent at stage 2 (Nature Medicine 2026). Symptoms are not a reason to wait for a check: the NHS tells anyone with symptoms to see a GP now.