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Lung cancer screening (low-dose CT)
The trials are positive and the European recommendation asks countries to build programmes stepwise. In this region it is still pilots rather than invitations — but the eligibility rule is worth knowing.
This page describes screening programmes; it is not a diagnosis, not a personal risk assessment and not a substitute for your own health service. Age bands are set nationally and change — the invitation you receive, and the body named on your country page, outrank anything written here. Screening is for people without symptoms: a new lump, blood you can see, a mole that has changed, unexplained weight loss or a sudden change in vision or hearing needs a clinician now, whatever a recent screening result said.
Where it is organised
Nowhere in this region as an invitation programme. That is a decision rather than an oversight, and the section below explains the reasoning. It also means nothing will arrive in the post: if this is something you want checked, you have to ask for it.
Why this is the newest programme
For decades the answer on lung screening was no, because chest X-rays did not save lives. Low-dose computed tomography changed it. The American National Lung Screening Trial found roughly a twenty per cent reduction in lung cancer deaths compared with chest X-ray, and the Dutch–Belgian NELSON trial found a reduction of about a quarter in men at ten years. The 2022 European Council Recommendation responded by asking member states to extend screening to lung cancer through a stepwise approach — piloting and evaluating rather than switching on a national programme overnight — and that is exactly the stage this region is at.
Who the eligibility rule is for
Lung screening is not offered by age alone. It is aimed at people with a heavy smoking history: current smokers and those who stopped relatively recently, usually defined by pack-years and by how long ago they quit, in an age band around the fifties to mid-seventies. This is a very different design from breast or bowel screening, where everyone in an age band is invited. The reason is arithmetic: the yield in a low-risk population is too small to outweigh the harms of scanning healthy chests.
What the scan is like, and the nodule problem
It is a fast CT with a low radiation dose, no injection, no preparation, and you lie still for a few seconds holding your breath. The complication is that CT of any adult chest finds small nodules very often, and the great majority are harmless scars or old infections. Screening programmes handle this with a size-based protocol: below a threshold, nothing happens; in the middle, a repeat scan in a few months to see whether it grows; above it, further investigation. Being told you have a nodule is common, and it is not the same as being told you may have cancer.
Quitting still beats screening
This has to be said plainly on a page about lung screening, because the risk of the opposite conclusion is real: a clear scan is not a reason to keep smoking. Stopping reduces lung cancer risk far more than any screening programme reduces lung cancer mortality, and it reduces heart attack, stroke and chronic lung disease at the same time — none of which a CT programme touches. The best-run lung screening pilots pair every invitation with a cessation offer for exactly this reason.
Sources: Council Recommendation of 9 December 2022 on cancer screening (CELEX 32022H1213(01)) · National Lung Screening Trial and the NELSON trial — the two randomised trials of low-dose CT screening · checked 2026-09-07
Частые вопросы
Is lung cancer screening available in the Nordic and Baltic countries?
Not as a national invitation programme. Estonia and others are running pilots, and the 2022 European recommendation asks countries to build lung screening stepwise through piloting rather than immediate rollout.
Who qualifies for lung screening?
It is targeted rather than age-based: people with a heavy smoking history, current or recently stopped, in an age band around the fifties to mid-seventies. The exact pack-year and quit-date thresholds are set by each programme.
What happens if the scan finds a nodule?
Usually nothing immediate. Small nodules are extremely common and mostly harmless. Programmes use a size-based protocol: watch and repeat the scan for intermediate ones, investigate only those above a threshold or those that grow.
If I am screened, does it matter whether I stop smoking?
Enormously. Stopping cuts lung cancer risk far more than screening cuts lung cancer mortality, and it also cuts heart attack, stroke and chronic lung disease, which no CT programme addresses. Good pilots pair screening with cessation support.
The rest of the surface
Breast cancer screening (mammography)
An X-ray of each breast, read by two radiologists, repeated every two years across a band of ages that starts at 40 in Sweden and 50 almost everywhere else. What it finds, what it misses and what a call-back means.
Cervical screening (HPV test)
Almost every country in the region has switched from looking for abnormal cells to looking for the virus that causes them. The test is better, so the gap between tests is longer — and in several countries you can now take the sample yourself.
Bowel cancer screening (stool test)
A sample from one bowel movement, taken at home and posted. It is the only screening programme in the region that routinely prevents cancers rather than only finding them early — because the follow-up removes the polyp.
Prostate screening (PSA)
Latvia and Lithuania fund PSA testing for men in their fifties and sixties. Sweden assessed the same evidence and recommends against an organised programme. Here is what the trials actually found.
Abdominal aortic aneurysm scan
The only non-cancer screening programme in the region. Sweden offers men a single abdominal ultrasound in the year they turn 65, looking for a silent widening of the main artery.
What screening can and cannot do
Overdiagnosis, false positives, interval cases and lead-time bias — the four ideas behind every disagreement between countries.
All 27 screening pagesIf the result is not normal
The record that makes the appointment shorter
TempoLife keeps weight, blood pressure, sleep and symptoms in one place, so the questions you get asked at a screening appointment already have answers.