If healthcare isn’t at the top of your list of concerns in 2020, we’d like to find out where you live and maybe move there! Where we live, COVID-19 has been a relentless presence, requiring most of our attention and forcing us to change the way we do almost everything. One of the unfortunate results of the pandemic has been a reduction in cancer screenings, especially between March and July. While the fallout from missed and delayed screenings is not fully known, we know cancer screenings are the best way to catch cancer early, when it is easier to treat.
This week, we recognize Cancer Screen Week to help raise awareness of the importance of screening. (Want to learn more? Check this out.) We really can’t say it often enough: Women, get your mammograms and Pap smears. Men, get your prostate exams and check your testicles for lumps. Everyone, get your colonoscopies. If you’re a smoker or former smoker, get lung scans.
Currently, though, there are screening tests for only a half-dozen or so cancers. That means for most kinds of cancer, there are no early detection screenings. They are too often found only when they’ve advanced enough to cause symptoms and when they are more difficult to treat.
The good news is that we are on the verge of changing that. Because of advances in early detection research, a simple blood draw will soon allow us to find many cancers early, when they can more successfully be treated.
A number of these multi-cancer blood tests are in development and will be available to the public in the coming years.
To be clear, these tests won’t replace the need for other screenings. You’ll still need to get your colonoscopies and mammograms. But for cancers that have no good screening tools, the new blood tests will be a game changer — if patients have access to them.
Even if the blood tests are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, they won’t automatically be covered by Medicare. Screening tests are considered preventive care, and it has literally required an act of Congress to get Medicare to cover other cancer screening tests.
Recently introduced legislation, the Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act, would ensure Medicare beneficiaries will have timely access to multi-cancer blood tests once they are FDA approved. This is critical. As much as we all want new ammunition in the war on cancer, new tools in our arsenal are no good if patients don’t have access to them.
We are proud that one of our Alabama congressional representatives, Terri Sewell, is the lead sponsor on this legislation. (Go here to learn more about the bill.) The Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act will help ensure that access, and we are convinced it will save countless lives.
In the meantime, please continue to take advantage of the tools we already have. Cancer Screen Week is a good time to make sure you are up to date on all available screenings — even as we await new technology that will greatly enhance our ability to catch and treat cancer.