Kearney, Neb. — Two organizations have joined forces to create a program that detects the preliminary stages of lung cancer.

The collaboration involves a screening program between Mary Lanning Health Center and Morrison Cancer Center that increases the chances of survival.

According to the American Lung Association, lung cancer is to blame for nearly one-fourth of cancer deaths. In the state of Nebraska, lung cancer is the number one cancer killer.

MORE PEOPLE LIVING LONGER WITH LUNG CANCER, REPORT SAYS

Chandra Muske, an oncology nurse at the Morrison Cancer Center says they took pre-developed software to monitor and track these early detections.

“They go by there’s different sizes of that, depending on the size, if it’s something they need to watch and wait or if there’s something that they need to do additional testing or screening or biopsy on,” Muske said.

However, only six percent of Nebraskans are getting these screens and insurance companies are dictating the criteria for patients to be soon.

“It’s for patients who are current smokers between the ages of 50 and 80 and if you have quit smoking in the last 15 years, you have to have a twenty-pack smoking history,” she said.

Muske says this program allows them to detect those early signs and not only manage the cancer, but it could also cure it.

“A lot of your cancers like your breast cancers, you do mammograms earlier, your colonoscopies, at least there’s a screening that’s available. We were not seeing a lot of early diagnosis of our lung cancer; we were seeing a lot of your later stages like stages three and four and we want to catch them early,” Muske said.

According to the American Cancer Society, they estimate 238,000 diagnoses this year and 127,000 of those patients will die of the disease.

The Morrison Cancer Center encourages anyone who is at higher risk to get in to see their primary care doctor to see if they qualify.