PhD defence Erik Blom

In the United States, annual lung cancer screening has been recommended since 2013, for persons aged 55-80 with a smoking history of at least 30 pack-years, that currently smoke or quit less than 15 years ago. Despite this recommendation, the uptake of lung cancer screening in the United States remains low. In Europe and the United Kingdom, many countries have been debating a possible implementation of lung cancer screening. In the meantime, many topics of debate remain. This thesis deals with two of these topics. The first part of this thesis (Chapters 1-3) investigates which treatments lung cancer patients in the United States received before the implementation of lung cancer screening, and how these treatment patterns change as a result of the implementation of lung cancer screening. In the second part of this thesis (Chapters 4-6), the benefits and harms of population-based lung cancer screening in the United States are investigated from different perspectives.