In 2023 Janice Coleman was experiencing intense, debilitating pain in her side. She went to the doctor who later diagnosed her with a urinary tract infection (UTI). But the pain was so acute the physician referred her for a CAT scan in Beaumont Hospital.
“So they did the CAT scan just to be on the safe side; they said it was better to be safe than sorry. And they found a spot on my lung by accident. They weren’t even looking for the lungs, they were looking for something else,” the now 54-year-old said. “I had no symptoms but on June 26th, 2023, they called me in and told me I had a 3.5cm tumour in my lung. I had cancer.”
Ms Coleman is grateful for this accidental discovery as it meant the cancer was diagnosed at an early stage and only required surgery to treat it. “I had 40 per cent of my lung removed. They got all of it, it didn’t go into the lymph nodes or anything. I am one of the lucky ones. It was absolutely amazing.”
Ms Coleman, from Coolock, Dublin, was speaking following the launch of a mobile lung health check scheme, a first-of-its-kind pilot clinical trial in Ireland which seeks to catch lung cancer at a much earlier stage.
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Funded by a €4.9 million investment by the Irish Cancer Society, this initiative will bring lung health checks directly into the communities of north Dublin and the northeast through mobile scanning units.
The pilot has partnered with four GAA grounds – Croke Park, O’Toole’s GAA club in Raheny, Fingallians in Swords, Co Dublin, and O’Raghallaighs in Drogheda, Co Louth – to locate the mobile unit throughout the two-year pilot.
Prof Daniel Ryan, respiratory consultant at the Beaumont RCSI Cancer Centre and clinical lead of the pilot, said they will rotate through these locations at “intervals”.
“We will scan you once and if everything is fine we will bring you back a year later and scan you again. If we find a little spot on the lung that we need to monitor we’ll bring you back more quickly and bring you back in three months and scan you again.”
In Ireland around 60 per cent of people diagnosed with lung cancer are detected at a later stage, when treatment options are more limited. However, introducing lung health checks for high-risk individuals using low dose CAT scans has been shown to reduce lung cancer mortality by at least 20 per cent.
Prof Jarushka Naidoo, consultant medical oncologist, is leading the programme, and said it will have a “holistic approach”.
“You’ll have a breathing test, a set of questions to try to improve a person’s lung health, some optional blood, breath and sputum tests and then the CAT scan,” she said.
Averil Power, chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, said around 2,700 Irish people are diagnosed with lung cancer every year, with around 1,800 dying from the disease.
“It’s Ireland’s number one cancer killer and the main reason for that is that it tends to be picked up late when it’s difficult to treat. People tend to not have symptoms until it’s very advanced. This lung screening pilot, we’re confident it will save the lives of some people who take part.”
This is a statement with which Ms Coleman also believes, saying if her diagnosis was not caught as early as it was her prognosis would have been a lot worse.
“The doctor said to me that it was the best UTI I have ever had,” she laughed. “It saved my life.”
