Hopes of early access to lung cancer test

CANCER specialists are hopeful GPs will soon be able to use a simple blood test to assess a smoker’s risk of developing lung cancer.

Lung cancer is Ireland’s greatest killer, with more than 1,500 people dying from the disease every year. Smoking has long been established as the predominant risk factor in the disease, with 90% of cases being attributed directly to tobacco exposure.

The man leading up research into the new blood test, British cancer specialist Professor Tim Eisen, one of the speakers at an international cancer conference in St James’s Hospital in Dublin, has discovered some of the faulty genes that increase the risk of lung cancer.