Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in Kentucky, with over 10,000 deaths reported each year.

And because Kentucky has the highest rate of new lung cancer cases across the country, Med Center Health has created the Lung Nodule Program, a fast-track clinic that will help in the fight against lung cancer and give patients a better chance of surviving it.

The goal of the program is to detect lung nodules at the earliest stages to either prevent serious issues before they occur or to treat concerns quickly by offering a variety of options tailored to a specific diagnosis.

Jennifer Finch, director of clinical integration at Med Center Health, said the program, which is a collaboration between Western Kentucky Heart and Lung pulmonologists and Med Center Health cardiothoracic surgeons, can benefit lung cancer patients by detecting cancer at stage 1, where there is a 70-80% survival rate, instead of at stage 4.

The program consists of 11 providers, including pulmonologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists and cardiothoracic surgeons.

The team meets each Friday to view and discuss patients who may need further examination and review reports of patients who have incidental lung nodules and those detected through low-dose CT scans, working directly with the patient’s primary care providers.

Eligible patients are then scheduled for consultations with the program’s team of physicians.

“As a team, we review the patient’s history, whether the patient is a smoker, family history and cancer risk to see if the nodule could be benign or cancerous,” Finch said.

A treatment plan will then be devised based on the patient’s needs, including further testing, surgery, diagnostic imaging, chemotherapy, radiation therapy or a biopsy that may include the program’s ION Bronchoscopy technology.

Finch said ION Bronchoscopy is a new technology that allows pulmonologists to biopsy smaller nodules.

“Historically, on small lesions, we had to wait and watch to see if they grew, but this computer-assisted robotic guided program guides the doctors to the small nodule, allowing them to get it,” she said.

Finch said since the program opened Dec. 8, “we have had fantastic outcomes already.”

“This program is really personal for me, and I have such a passion for it because my father died of lung cancer,” she said.

She said when a nodule was first found on his lung, it was too small to do anything, so the doctor wanted to watch it for a while to see if it grew.

“But they waited too long and by then, it was too late,” she said. “If we had the technology we have now back then, he might still be here today.”

Finch said that if even one life is saved, “it’s totally worth it.”

“It’s really a fantastic program,” she said. “The collaboration and the brainstorming with the doctors makes it absolutely fascinating.”

The Lung Nodule Program is located at the Medical Arts Building, Suite 106, 350 Park St.

For more information, call (270) 535-6886 or visit https://medcenterhealth.org/location/med-center-health-lung-nodule-program/.