A decline in smoking rates may mean that many people who could have benefited from early detection of lung cancer are dying because they don’t qualify for low-dose CT scans, according to a group of Mayo Clinic researchers. Their research appears in the Feb. 24 issue of JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.

“As smokers quit earlier and stay off cigarettes longer, fewer are eligible for CT screening, which has been proven effective in saving lives,” says Ping Yang, MD, PhD, an epidemiologist at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center. “Patients who do eventually develop lung cancer are diagnosed at a later stage when treatment can no longer result in a cure.”