ZAGREB, December 1, 2019 – Croatia is launching a national lung cancer early detection programme in January 2020, and for that purpose the City of Zagreb has purchased a new, state-of-the-art CT scanner for the Jordanovac Clinic for Lung Diseases, it was said at the launch of the “We are talking about lung cancer” campaign.
“Early screening will help detect the disease in an early stage, before metastasising, which gives up to 80 percent of patients a chance to live longer than five years,” Marko Jakopović of the Jordanovac Clinic said.
He said that the programme would cover, among others, long-term smokers because smoking is the leading cause of this disease in Croatia.
In Croatia, lung cancer is the most frequent form of cancer in men and the third most frequent in women. Non-smoking and raising public awareness remains the best way to combat this disease. Despite the great progress made in the last ten years in treating this disease, about 3,000 people die of lung cancer annually.
“Croatia is among the top ten countries in Europe in terms of availability of lung cancer treatment drugs. Thanks to this, 50 percent of patients with metastasised lung cancer will live longer than five years. The aim of new therapies is to turn lung cancer into a chronic disease such as high blood pressure or diabetes. Immunotherapy is now available to all Croatian patients and helps them live long and have a quality life,” Jakopović said.
The head of the City of Zagreb Health Office, Vjekoslav Jelač, said that for the national lung cancer early detection programme the City of Zagreb had purchased a low-dose high-resolution CT scanner that can detect even the slightest change in the lungs. He said that in the United States early scanning had reduced the mortality rate by 20 percent and improved the quality of treatment.
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