In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Q: A government panel is now recommending annual CT scans for lung cancer for people at highest risk of the disease, a move that it says could reduce the number of deaths from lung cancer each year. 
  
 The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force reviewed evidence from the newest clinical trials and is recommending CT scans to replace yearly chest X-rays, according to a statement from the agency. 
  
 The recommendation applies to the population at highest risk: people ages 55 to 79, who have smoked at least a pack a day for 30 years, even if they have quit as long as 15 years ago. 
  
 CT scans can detect cancers that X-rays might miss, early enough when a cancer could be treated by surgery, the agency said. 
  
 Evidence from modeling studies suggests that the recommended screening program would prevent about 14 percent of deaths from lung cancer each year, an estimated 521 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the statement. 
  
 Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the U.S., and causes 160,000 deaths a year, more than any other cancer. 
  
 The majority of lung cancers can be treated surgically if the disease is discovered early, but currently nearly 90 percent of patients with lung cancer die from it. 
  
 In 2004, the task force had concluded that more evidence was needed to determine whether yearly CT scans would provide any benefits. 
  
 The new recommendations are based on a large-scale clinical trial of people at highest risk of lung cancer, which showed that screening CT scans reduced lung cancer deaths by 16 percent. 
  
 The study, conducted by the National Cancer Institute, involved more than 50,000 current or former heavy smokers ages 55 to 74. Participants, who didn't have lung cancer at the study's start, were randomly assigned to receive annual screening with either CT scans or chest X-rays. After six to seven years of follow-up, 2.06 percent of people in the chest X-ray group, and 1.75 percent of those in the CT group had died from lung cancer. 
  
 Annual CT scans come with their risks too. Besides radiation exposure, and as with any other screening program, they might miss some cancers or falsely detect disease in healthy people, leading to over-diagnosis. 
  
  
  
 Email Bahar Gholipour or follow her @alterwired. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com. ||||| Longtime heavy smokers should be offered annual lung cancer screening using low-dose computed tomography scans instead of chest X-rays, a group of prevention experts recommended on Monday. 
  
 A CT scan is better at finding tumors early, when they are most treatable, and the benefits outweigh the risks for people ages 55 to 79 who smoked the equivalent of a pack a day for 30 years and continue to smoke or quit fewer than 15 years ago, according to the US Preventive Services Task Force. The group is an independent panel of primary care experts created by Congress. 
  
 Using CT scans trumped chest X-rays, which are currently recommended for screening this group of 7 million Americans, in reducing lung cancer deaths, the panel said. 
  
 The new recommendation could prevent some of the 160,000 lung cancer deaths that occur in the United States every year because 85 percent of these deaths occur in those with a strong smoking history. It also means that insurance companies will be required to cover the $300 to $400 screening, under a mandate in the federal health law. 
  
 “It’s a fantastic move,” said Dr. Christopher Lathan, an oncologist who treats lung cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer; but there hasn’t been a reliable, safe way to screen high-risk people until now.” 
  
 But some preventive health experts argued that patients also need to be informed of the potential harms of screening, including overdiagnosis, excess radiation exposure, and lung biopsies for growths that turn out not to be cancer. 
  
 While the American Cancer Society adopted very similar recommendations in January, the organization put a “high emphasis ... on informed decision making about the benefits and harms associated with screening for lung cancer,” Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the society’s chief medical officer, said in a statement responding to the Task Force guidelines. 
  
 In particular, he added, those at increased lung cancer risk should be told by their doctors about the high rate of false findings on the ultra-sensitive screening test. Such findings usually result in a full-dose followup CT scan, which delivers 10 times more radiation than a low-dose screening scan. 
  
 The Task Force calculated that screening 287,000 high-risk individuals would prevent 521 lung cancer deaths but cause an additional 24 cancer deaths from excess radiation exposure. 
  
 “I think the group that they’re recommending to be screened is too broad,” said Dr. Kenny Lin, a primary care physician at Georgetown University Medical Center who used to evaluate screening research to provide to the Task Force. 
  
 Some patient advocacy groups, on the other hand, say the recommendations should be broader, applying to those who smoke less but have other risk factors such as a family history of lung cancer or exposure to a lung carcinogen such as asbestos, expanded criteria that one cancer research organization recommends. 
  
 The task force based its draft recommendation, which will be finalized later this year after a public comment period, on a clinical trial of 50,000 current and former smokers with a history of smoking a pack a day for decades. That trial showed a reduction in lung cancer deaths of 16 percent compared with an annual chest X-ray after nearly seven years of followup. 
  
 “It’s hard to find the sweet spot, but we think the population we proposed has a pretty good balance,” said Dr. Michael LeFevre, co-vice chair of the task force. He said the group considered the issue of CT scans detecting and leading to treatment of very-early-stage lung cancers that would never have become life threatening. Researchers have raised similar concerns for breast and prostate cancer screening tests. 
  
 “We calculated this occurs in about 3 to 4 percent of lung cancers diagnosed through screening, which is a pretty low rate as far as cancers go,” LeFevre said. At least 10 percent of breast cancers detected via mammograms are considered to be non-threatening cancers, and the percentage is even greater for prostate cancer screening. 
  
 With a current lack of insurance coverage, low-dose CT screening is offered only in a handful of hospitals in the Boston area. Brigham and Women’s Hospital offers it to those willing to pay $350 a scan. Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington began offering free screenings in January 2012, with the hospital picking up the tab. ||||| Your Health 
  
 Panel Urges Lung Cancer Screening For Millions Of Americans 
  
 iStockphoto.com 
  
 A federal task force is planning to recommend that millions of smokers and former smokers get a CT scan annually to look for early signs of lung cancer. 
  
 The 16-member US Preventive Services Task Force gives that lung cancer screening test a grade of B, which puts it on the same level as mammography for women between the ages of 50 and 74. 
  
 That grade is important, because preventive tests with a grade of A or B oblige Medicare, other federal health programs and private insurers to cover the entire cost, beginning a year after a guideline is adopted. A lung scan costs about $300 to $500. 
  
 "This is the first time we've had science that tells us that we can actually avoid some lung cancer deaths through screening," task force vice chairman Michael LeFevre tells Shots. "So this is really a big change." 
  
 It's a change that some won't welcome. Some experts warn that it's going to cause too much follow-up testing for many patients, with the accompanying anxiety. Another concern is that screening will uncover many cancers that would never have caused a problem – a phenomenon called overdiagnosis. 
  
 An explanation of the proposed recommendation appears today in Annals of Internal Medicine. It's based on a federally financed study of more than 50,000 people published two years ago. 
  
 The task force estimates that its proposed recommendation will cut U.S. lung cancer deaths by 20,000 a year. That's only about 13 percent of the nearly 160,000 people who die of the disease in this country annually. 
  
 "That's a relatively small proportion of those 160,000 deaths," LeFevre acknowledges. The problem is that even with screening, many people's lung cancer will be too advanced for effective treatment. "But a small proportion of a big number is still a big number," adds LeFevre. "And 20,000 lives is a lot of people." 
  
 “ This is the first time we've had science that tells us that we can actually avoid some lung cancer deaths through screening. 
  
 He says the lung cancer screening test – a computed tomography or CT scan – is actually more effective than mammography or colonoscopy in saving lives. 
  
 Under the panel's proposal, screening is expected to save one life for every 320 people screened. By comparison, it takes 900 to 1,900 mammograms to save one life from breast cancer (depending on whether those screened are older or younger). And LeFevre estimates that it takes about 500 colonoscopies to save a life from colon cancer. 
  
 The task force will consider comments on the proposed guidelines before issuing a final recommendation in three to six months, LeFevre says. 
  
 Tom Murphy, a 61-year-old Maryland man, has no doubt that annual screening prevented him from dying of lung cancer as his father did. 
  
 Murphy, who smoked for three decades, started getting yearly lung scans in 2005 as part of a study. Five years later, a scan showed that a spot on his right lung was growing. 
  
 "Oh absolutely, that scan saved my life," Murphy tells Shots. "This thing started at five millimeters in January of 2010 and at the point they took it out, it was 1.2 centimeters, nine months later. So I'm very grateful. And I believe to this day that it saved my life." 
  
 The proposed recommendation is aimed at people who are at especially high risk of lung cancer. They're between the ages of 55 and 79 and they have smoked the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years or more. If they have quit smoking, it must be within the past 15 years. After that, people have gained enough benefit from not smoking that screening isn't useful, the panel says. 
  
 Nearly 90 million Americans are smokers or former smokers. About 7 million of these are in the target age group and have smoked at least a pack a day for 30 years. 
  
 The Task Force is trying to strike a crucial balance – what LeFevre calls "the point at which (the screening tests) seems to do a significant amount more good than harm." 
  
 A fundamental problem with lung cancer CT screening is that when it finds a suspicious-looking nodule in a lung, it turns out to be non-cancerous 96 percent of the time. That's called a false positive rate, and it may be higher than any other approved screening test. 
  
 Most people who have a positive scan would be scheduled for a second scan several months later to see if the nodule has grown. If it has, the patient may need further scans, a biopsy of tissue through a needle inserted into the lung, or even lung surgery. 
  
 "We are actually going to do some lung surgery on people just to prove that they don't have cancer," LeFevre says. 
  
 He says people who have an abnormal lung scan are going to have to be calm, patient and deliberate – and their doctors are too. 
  
 "This is an anxiety that I have about lung cancer screening," says LeFevre, who is an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Missouri. 
  
 "If somebody hears they have a 5 percent chance that this is cancer, and then you say, 'Well, let's wait three months and repeat your CAT scan,' if the emotional response is, 'No, let's do something now," then we're going to do a lot of harm in the process of doing a little good," LeFevre says. 
  
 Dr. Kenneth Lin of Georgetown University thinks the task force is putting too much faith in lung screening. 
  
 "They rank it with those tests that your doctor – if they're a good doctor – is supposed to bug you about to get done," Lin says, referring to mammograms, colonoscopy and Pap smears. "And I don't feel that this test necessarily meets that criteria. I don't necessarily feel that patients should be pressured into getting this test done." 
  
 He and others worry not only about the high false-positive rate and the ensuing medical tests, but also what doctors call "overdiagnosis" – the discovery of cancers that would never become a problem. 
  
 "Uncovering this reservoir of indolent disease will almost always happen when you start screening," Dr. Laura Esserman, a breast cancer specialist at the University of California San Francisco, tells Shots. "We need to recognize it and understand it. Because if you don't, you're going to overtreat people." 
  
 Esserman is coauthor of a commentary on overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancer published online Monday by JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. |||||
A: 
Longtime heavy smokers should add a yearly chore to their medical regimen, says an influential federal panel: Get a CT scan. Specifically, the panel recommends that people 55 to 79 who have smoked a pack a day for 30 years should get the tests, even if they've long since quit the habit, reports LiveScience. The CT scans would replace the current recommendation of yearly chest X-rays, reports the Boston Globe. And because the move is strongly recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force, insurance companies would have to cover the $300 to $400 cost. "This is the first time we've had science that tells us that we can actually avoid some lung cancer deaths through screening," a vice chairman of the task force tells the Shots blot at NPR. "So this is really a big change." The move is somewhat controversial, because it brings with it dangers such as overdiagnosis and overtreatment, but the panel thinks the benefits outweigh the risks. They estimate that the scans will save 20,000 lives a year, once the recommendation officially goes into place later this year.