Long-awaited lung cancer screening program coming to P.E.I., says health minister

Stephen Brun · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 07, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 22 minutes ago

The province's wellness curate says P.E.I. is getting a lung crab screening program, thing advocates person said is urgently needed connected the Island. 

"We person a two-year program to signifier successful the lung [cancer] screening program," Mark McLane said Friday. 

"We person a respirologist joining our strategy successful precocious summer, truthful that accomplishment acceptable is precise important to lasting up that program." 

The state has besides purchased a 2nd computerized tomography (CT) scanner for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital successful Charlottetown to boost the screening program's capacity.

Prince Edward Island already operates screening programs for colorectal cancer, cervical crab and bosom cancer. 

The Canadian Cancer Society has been pushing the P.E.I. authorities for a timeline and steadfast budgetary committedness to instrumentality a programme to surface for lung issues.

Lung crab is the starring origin of crab deaths among some men and women successful P.E.I., and the province's incidence complaint is supra the nationalist average.

The contented came up successful the legislative assembly connected Friday, with McLane's chap Progressive Conservative, MLA Susie Dillon, asking astir a timeline for the program's implementation. 

She said 70 per cent of Islanders who are diagnosed with lung crab find retired astatine a precocious stage, erstwhile attraction options are constricted and the endurance rates are lower. Dillon cited statistic that amusement the five-year endurance complaint for Stage 4 lung crab is lone 3 per cent. 

Smoking cessation programme effective, says McLane

McLane said the section is looking to akin programs crossed Canada to larn champion practices. British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia person launched lung crab screening, portion New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador are presently moving pilots. 

The wellness curate besides pointed to the enlargement of the province's smoking cessation programme into pharmacies arsenic a prevention tool. 

He said astir 7,000 Islanders person signed up for that programme since it started, and it has a 30 per cent occurrence complaint for getting radical to quit. That's opposed to a 10 per cent occurrence complaint without the program.